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RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 



1. Longfellow's Evangeline. 

2. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. 

3. Dramatization of Miles Standish. 

4. Whittier's Snow-Bound, etc. 

5. Whittier's Mabel Martin. 

6. Holmes's Grandmother's Story. 

7. 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. 

10. Hawthorne's Biographical Series. 

11. Longfellow's Children's Hour, etc. 

12. Outlines — Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, 

Lowell. 

13. 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. 

15. Lowell's Under the Old Elm, etc. 

16. Bayard Taylor's Lars. 

17. 18. Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. 
19, 20. Franklin's Autobiography. 

21. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, etc 

22, 23. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. 

24. Washington's Farewell Addresses, etc 

25, 26. Longfellow's Golden Legend. 

27. Thoreau's Forest Trees, etc. 

28. Burroughs's Birds and Bees. 

29. Hawthorne's Little Daffydowndilly, etc. 

30. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, etc. 

31. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, etc. 

32. Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, etc. 
33-35. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. 

36. Burroughs's Sharp Eyes, etc. 

37. Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer, etc. 

38. Longfellow's Building of the Ship, etc. 

39. Lowell's Books and Libraries, etc. 

40. Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills. 

41. Whittier's Tent on the Beach, etc. 

42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic, etc. 

43. Bryant's Ulysses among the Phaeacians. 

44. Edgeworth's Waste not, Want not, etc. 

45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 

46. Old Testament Stories. 

47. 48. Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories. 
49, 50. Andersen's Stories. 

51. Irving's Rip "Van Winkle, etc. 

52. Irving's The Voyage, etc. 

53. Scott's Lady of the Lake. 

54. Bryant's Thanatopsis, etc. 

55. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 

56. Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration. 

57. Dickens's Christmas Carol. 

58. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth. 
•>9. Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading. 
60, 61. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 

62. Fiske's War of Independence. 

63. Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, etc. 
64-66. Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare. 

67. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 

68. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, etc 

69. Hawthorne's The Old Manse, etc. 

70. 71. Selection from Whittier's Child Life. 

72. Milton's Minor Poems. 

73. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, etc. 

74. Gray's Elegy ; Cowper's John Gilpin. 

75. Scudder's George Washington. 

76. Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality. 
77 Bum'i Cotter's Saturday Night, etc 



78. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 

79. Lamb's Old China, etc. 

80. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner ; Campbell's 
Lochiel's Warning, etc. 

Holmes' s Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 
Hawthorne's Twice- Told Tales. 
Eliot's Silas Marner. 
Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. 
Hughes's Tom Brown's School Daya. 
Scott's Ivanhoe. 
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
89, 90. Swift's Gulliver's Voyages. 

91. Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. 

92. Burroughs's A Bunch of Herbs, etc. 

93. Shakespeare's As You Like It. 

94. Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I-III. 
95-98. Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. 
99. Tennyson's Coming of Arthur, etc. 

100. Burke's Conciliation with the Colonies. 

101. Pope's Iliad. Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV. 

102. Macaulay's Johnson and Goldsmith. 

103. Macaulay's Milton. 

104. Macaulay's Addison. 

105. Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

106. Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

107. 108. Grimms' Tales. 

109. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 

110. De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. 

111. Tennyson's Princess. 

112. Cranch's ^Eneid. Books I-III. 

113. Poems from Emerson. 

114. Peabody's Old Greek Folk Stories. 

115. Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc. 

116. Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

117. 118. Stories from the Arabian Nights. 
119, 120. Poe's Poems and Tales. 

121. Speech by Hayne on Foote's Resolution. 

122. Speech by Webster in Reply to Hayne. 

123. Lowell's Democracy, etc. 



124. Aldrich's The Cruise of the Dolphin. 

125. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 

126. Ruskin's King of the Golden River, etc. 

127. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, etc. 

128. Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, etc 

129. Plato's Judgment of Socrates. 

130. Emerson's The Superlative, etc 

131. Emerson's Nature, etc. 

132. Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, etc 

133. Schnrz's Abraham Lincoln. 

134. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

135. Chaucer's Prologue. 

136. Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, etc. 

137. Bryant's Iliad. Bks. I, VI, XXII, XXIV. 

138. Hawthorne's The Custom House, etc. 

139. Howells's Doorstep Acquaintance, etc 

140. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. 

141. Higginson's Three Outdoor Papers. 

142. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. 

143. Plutarch's Alexander the Great. 

144. Scudder's The Book of Legends. 

145. Hawthorne's The Gentle Boy, etc 

146. Longfellow's Giles Corey. 

(See also back covers,} (74) 



gtljt ISitursiDe JLitcrature Series 



SELECTIONS FROM 

AMERICAN POETRY 

WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO 

LONGFELLOW, WHITTIER 
POE and LOWELL 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
BY 

FREDERICK HOUK LAW, A.M. Ph.D. 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE 
STUVVESANT HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YOKE CITY 




BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



T5^ 

PREFACE .L ^ 

The purpose of this text is to present material for the 
present college entrance requirement for reading "Selec- 
tions from American Poets, with special attention to Long- 
fellow, Whittier, Poe, and Lowell." Its further purpose is 
to present poems so carefully chosen with regard to points 
of contact with adolescent life that they will give imme- 
diate pleasure and stimulate a desire for further reading 
along the best lines of interest. Furthermore, the poems 
have been chosen with regard to high literary values and 
far-reaching ethical importance. 

In accordance with the college entrance requirement em- 
phasis has been placed upon the work of Longfellow, Whit- 
tier, Poe, and Lowell. The poems of these writers have 
been placed first for the convenience of those who prefer 
to devote more intensive study to the writers of greatest 
importance. "The Vision of Sir Launfal," although much 
longer than any other poem in the book, has been included 
to meet the needs of those who wish to make a special study 
of that poem and at the same time to have at hand a help- 
ful body of collateral reading in American poetry. 

The book presents also explanatory notes, suggestions for 
study and for further reading, biographical notes, and valu- 
able critical estimates of the work of Longfellow, Whittier, 
Poe, and Lowell, — the last from Professor W. E. Simonds's 
A Student's History of American Literature. The poems by 
Bryant here reprinted are included with acknowledgments 
to D. Appleton & Co., the authorized publishers of Bryant's 
Poems. Permission to reprint those by Walt Whitman has 
been given by David McKay. Houghton Mifflin Company 
are the sole authorized publishers of the other poets repre-,, 
sented. 



COPYRIGHT I915 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

©CI.A398425 

APR 19 1918 

■ 



CONTENTS 

Introduction v 

Selected Poems 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

A Psalm of Life J 

The Wreck of the Hesperus 2 

The Village Blacksmith 5 

The Skeleton in Armor 

Serenade 

The Rainy Day l ] 

The Arsenal at Springfield 

Children 

The Bell of Atri . lo „ 

The Republic 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

18 
The Angels of Buena Vista 

MaudMuller ^ 

The Barefoot Boy 

The Pipes at Lucknow 

Marguerite 

In School-Days 



Edgar Allan Poe 

^ TT , .... 36 
To Helen 

Israfel gg 

The City in the Sea 

To One in Paradise 

^ ... 40 

The Raven 45 

Ulalume 4,8 

The Bells 

Annabel Lee 

Eldorado 



iv CONTENTS 

James Russell Lowell 

To the Dandelion 53 

The Present Crisis 55 

The Vision of Sir Launfal 60 

The First Snow-Fail 70 

The Courtin' 71 

Abraham Lincoln 74 

William Cullen Bryant 

Thanatopsis 76 

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood 78 

To a Waterfowl 79 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

TheRhodora 81 

Concord Hymn 81 

Fable 82 

Forbearance 82 

Music 83 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Old Ironsides 83 

The Chambered Nautilus 84 

The Deacon's Masterpiece 85 

Walt Whitman 

Cavalry Crossing a Ford 89 

O Captain! My Captain! 89 

Hush'd be the Camps To-day 90 

A Noiseless Patient Spider 91 

The First Dandelion 91 

Helps in Reading 92 

Biographical Notes 110 

An Estimate of the Poetry of Longfellow, 

Whittier, Poe, and Lowell 117 

Reference Books 121 



INTRODUCTION 

METHOD OF STUDY 

Our first duty in the study of a poem is to find the com- 
mon bond between ourselves and the poet. When we have 
found this point of contact we should realize it vividly 
through deeper thought or the stimulus of group discussion. 
We should go even further and realize the bond between the 
thought of the poet and the thought of the present-day 
world. It is the present, living significance of poetry that 
makes poetry worth while. A poem appeals to us in that 
proportion in which it expresses our own emotions. 

The second step in the study of poetry is to realize the 
meanings of the individual words as the poet has used them. 
We must find the connotative as well as the denotative 
values of the words employed. Then there are allusions to 
literature, to people, and to places, every allusion carrying 
with it a multitude of suggestions that may appeal to us 
through the association of ideas. Two dictionaries are 
therefore essential, the one a dictionary of words, the other 
a dictionary of proper names. 

We should trace the development of the author's thought 
as indicated in the various divisions of the poem, noting his 
method of approach to his subject, the points that he makes 
most emphatic, and his method of conclusion. When this 
has been done, we should consider the poem as an artistic 
whole, taking into account not only thought but also ex- 
pression. 

When we have mastered the thought-values of a poem 
we should consider its metrical and stanzaic forms, using as 
helps such books as Webster's Composition and Literature, 
chapter xi; Webster's English for Secondary Schools, chapter 
viii ; or Matthew's A Study of Versification. When we under- 
stand the mechanical means by which the poet produced the 
effects that please us, we gain proportionately in enjoyment. 

Knowledge of an author's life adds immensely to the 
pleasure that literature gives. When we read a poem whose 
thought, emotion, and artistic expression appeal to us deeply 



vi INTRODUCTION 

it is only natural to wish to know more concerning the 
writer. The study of biography should therefore accom- 
pany the study of poetry, not alone for the sake of illumi- 
nation, but also for the sake of the pleasure that may be 
derived from such study. A good encyclopaedia, or good 
biographies, — such as those of the American Men of Let- 
ters Series, — will be most helpful. 

In all study of poetry we should seek for such information 
as will lead us to think further or to read further in other 
books. We should make our study a center for life interests 
and for wide reading along the best lines. 

In the study of poetry the preparation of orderly note- 
books in which we may preserve and systematize the in- 
formation gained from day to day will be of the greatest help. 

Our study of the works of great poets should help to make 
us self-active. It should help us to think clearly and to feel 
deeply. It should lead us to express our own thoughts as 
clearly and as beautifully as possible. If we cannot express 
ourselves in verse, we should at least try to write prose that 
shall have somewhat of the charm, the high thought, and 
the noble spirit of the best poetry. 



SELECTED POEMS 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
A PSALM OF LIFE 

What the Heart of the Young Man said to the Psalmist 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
Life is but an empty dream ! — 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 5 

And the grave is not its goal ; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

Is our destined end or way; 10 

But to act, that each to-morrow 
Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 15 

Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world's broad field of battle, 

In the bivouac of Life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 

Be a hero in the strife ! 20 

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! 

Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
Act, — act in the living Present ! 

Heart within, and God o'erhead ! 



SELECTED POEMS 

Lives of great men all remind us 25 

We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time ; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 30 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate ; 
Still achieving, still pursuing, 35 

Learn to labor and to wait. 



THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 

It was the schooner Hesperus, 

That sailed the wintry sea; 
And the skipper had taken his little daughter, 

To bear him company. 

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, 5 

Her cheeks like the dawn of day, 

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, 
That ope in the month of May. 

The skipper he stood beside the helm, 

His pipe was in his mouth, 10 

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow 
The smoke now West, now South. 

Then up and spake an old Sailor, 

Had sailed to the Spanish Main, 
" t pray thee, put into yonder port, 15 

For I fear a hurricane. 

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring, 
And to-night no moon we see ! " 
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, 

And a scornful laugh laughed he. 20 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 3 

Colder and louder blew the wind, 

A gale from the Northeast, 
The snow fell hissing in the brine, 

And the billows frothed like yeast. 

Down came the storm, and smote amain 25 

The vessel in its strength ; 
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, 

Then leaped her cable's length. 

" Come hither ! come hither ! my little daughter, 

And do not tremble so ; 30 

For I can weather the roughest gale 
That ever wind did blow." 

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat 

Against the stinging blast ; 
He cut a rope from a broken spar, 35 

And bound her to the mast. 

" O father! I hear the church-bells ring, 

Oh say, what may it be ? " 
" 'T is a fog-bell on a rock- bound coast ! " — 

And he steered for the open sea. 40 

" O father ! I hear the sound of guns, 

Oh say, what may it be ? " 
" Some ship in distress, that cannot live 

In such an angry sea ! " 

" O father ! I see a gleaming light, 45 

Oh say, what may it be ? " 
But the father answered never a word, 
A frozen corpse was he. 

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, 

With his face turned to the skies, 50 

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow 
On his fixed and glassy eyes. 



SELECTED POEMS 

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed 

That saved she might be ; 
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, 55 

On the Lake of Galilee. 

And fast through the midnight dark and drear, 
Through the whistling sleet and snow, 

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept 

Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. 60 

And ever the fitful gusts between 

A sound came from the land ; 
It was the sound of the trampling surf 

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. 

The breakers were right beneath her bows, 65 

She drifted a dreary wreck, 
And a whooping billow swept the crew 

Like icicles from her deck. 

She struck where the white and fleecy waves 

Looked soft as carded wool, 70 

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side 
Like the horns of an angry bull. 

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, 
With the masts went by the board; 

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, 75 

Ho ! ho ! the breakers roared ! 

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 

A fisherman stood aghast, 
To see the form of a maiden fair, 

Lashed close to a drifting mast. 80 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 

The salt tears in her eyes ; 
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, 

On the billows fall and rise. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 5 

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 85 

In the midnight and the snow ! 

Christ save us all from a death like this, 
On the reef of Norman's Woe ! 



THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 

Under a spreading chestnut-tree 

The village smithy stands ; 
The smith, a mighty man is he, 

With large and sinewy hands ; 
And the muscles of his brawny arms 5 

Are strong as iron bands. 

His hair is crisp, and black, and long, 

His face is like the tan ; 
His brow is wet with honest sweat, 

He earns whate'er he can, 10 

And looks the whole world in the face, 

For he owes not any man. 

Week in, week out, from morn till night, 

You can hear his bellows blow ; 
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 15 

With measured beat and slow, 
Like a sexton ringing the village bell, 

When the evening sun is low. 

And children coming home from school 

Look in at the open door ; 20 

They love to see the naming forge, 
And hear the bellows roar, 

And catch the burning sparks that fly 
Like chaff from a threshing-floor. 

He goes on Sunday to the church, 25 

And sits among his boys ; 
He hears the parson pray and preach, 

He hears his daughter's voice, 
Singing in the village choir, 

And it makes his heart rejoice. 30 



SELECTED POEMS 

It sounds to him like her mother's voice, 

Singing in Paradise ! 
He needs must think of her once more, 

How in the grave she lies ; 
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 35 

A tear out of his eyes. 

Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, 

Onward through life he goes ; 
Each morning sees some task begin, 

Each evening sees it close ; 40 

Something attempted, something done, 

Has earned a night's repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 

For the lesson thou hast taught ! 
Thus at the naming forge of life 45 

Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 

Each burning deed and thought. 

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR 

" Speak ! speak ! thou fearful guest ! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 

Comest to daunt me ! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5 

But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 

Why dost thou haunt me ? " 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 

Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 

As when the Northern skies 

Gleam in December ; 
And, like the water's flow 
Under December's snow, 
Came a dull voice of woe 15 

From the heart's chamber. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 7 

" I was a Viking old ! 
My deeds, though manifold, 
$fo Skald in song has told, 

No Saga taught thee ! 20 

Take heed, that in thy verse 
Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
Else dread a dead man's curse ; 

For this I sought thee. 

" Far in the Northern Land, 25 

By the wild Baltic's strand, 
I, with my childish hand, 

Tamed the gerfalcon ; 
And, with my skates fast-bound, 
Skimmed the half -frozen Sound, 30 

That the poor whimpering hound 

Trembled to walk on. 

" Oft to his frozen lair 
Tracked I the grisly bear, 
While from my path the hare 35 

Fled like a shadow ; 
Oft through the forest dark 
Followed the were-wolf s bark, 
Until the soaring lark 

Sang from the meadow. 40 

" But when I older grew, 
Joining a corsair's crew, 
O'er the dark sea I flew 

With the marauders. 
Wild was the life we led ; 45 

Many the souls that sped, 
Many the hearts that bled, 

By our stern orders. 

" Many a wassail-bout 
Wore the long Winter out ; 50 

Often our midnight shout 
Set the cocks crowing, 



SELECTED POEMS 

As we the Berserk's tale 
Measured in cups of ale, 
Draining the oaken pail, 55 

Filled to o'erflowing. 

" Once as I told in glee 
Tales of the stormy sea, 
Soft eyes did gaze on me, 

Burning yet tender ; 60 

And as the white stars shine 
On the dark Norwr^y pine, 
On that dark heart of mine 

Fell their soft splendor. 

" I wooed the blue-eyed maid, 65 

Yielding, yet half afraid, 
And in the forest's shade 

Our vows were plighted. 
Under its loosened vest 
Fluttered her little breast, 70 

Like birds within their nest 

By the hawk frighted. 

" Bright in her father's hall 
Shields gleamed upon the wall, 
Loud sang the minstrels all, 75 

Chanting his glory ; 
When of old Hildebrand 
I asked his daughter's hand, 
Mute did the minstrels stand 

To hear my story. 80 

" While the brown ale he quaffed, 
Loud then the champion laughed, 
And as the wind-gusts waft 

The sea-foam brightly, 
So the loud laugh of scorn, 85 

Out of those lips unshorn, 
From the deep drinking-horn 

Blew the foam lightly. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 9 

" She was a Prince's child, 
I but a Viking wild, 90 

And though she blushed and smiled, 

I was discarded ! 
Should not the dove so white 
Follow the sea-mew's flight, — 
Why did they leave that night 95 

Her nest unguarded ? 

" Scarce had I put to sea, 
Bearing the maid with me, — 
Fairest of all was she 

Among the Norsemen ! — 100 

When on the white sea-strand, 
Waving his armed hand, 
Saw we old Hildebrancl, 

With twenty horsemen. 

" Then launched they to the blast, 105 

Bent like a reed each mast, 
Yet we were gaining fast, 

When the wind failed us ; 
And with a sudden flaw 
Came round the gusty Skaw, 110 

So that our foe we saw 

Laugh as he hailed us. 

" And as to catch the gale 
Round veered the flapping sail, 
4 Death ! ' was the helmsman's hail, 115 

4 Death without quarter ! ' 
Mid-ships with iron keel 
Struck we her ribs of steel ; 
Down her black hulk did reel 

Through the black water ! 120 

" As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking some rocky haunt, 
With his prey laden, — 



10 SELECTED POEMS 

So toward the open main, 125 

Beating to sea again, 
Through the wild hurricane, 
Bore I the maiden. 

" Three weeks we westward bore, 
And when the storm was o'er, i30 

Cloud-like we saw the shore 

Stretching to leeward ; 
There for my lady's bower 
Built I the lofty tower, 
Which, to this very hour, 135 

Stands looking seaward. 

" There lived we many years ; 
Time dried the maiden's tears ; 
She had forgot her fears, 

She was a mother ; 140 

Death closed her mild blue eyes, 
Under that tow^er she lies ; 
Ne'er shall the sun arise 

On such another ! 

" Still grew my bosom then, 145 

Still as a stagnant fen ! 
Hateful to me were men, 

The sunlight hateful! 
In the vast forest here, 
Clad in my warlike gear, 150 

Fell I upon my spear, 

Oh, death was grateful ! 

" Thus, seamed with many scars, 
Bursting these prison bars, 
Up to its native stars 155 

My soul ascended ! 
There from the flowing bow/ 
Deep drinks the warrior's soul, 
. Skoal! to the Northland! skoal/" 

Thus the tale ended. lbO 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 11 

SERENADE 

From The Spanish Student 

Stars of the summer night ! 
Far in yon azure cieeps, 
Hide, hide your golden light! 
She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 5 

Sleeps ! 

Moon of the summer night ! 

Far down yon western steeps, 
Sink, sink in silver light ! 

She sleeps ! 10 

My lady sleeps ! 
Sleeps ! 

Wind of the summer night ! 

Where yonder woodbine creeps, 
Fold, fold thy pinions light ! 15 

She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 
Sleeps ! 

Dreams of the summer night ! 

Tell her, her lover keeps 20 

Watch 1 while in slumbers light 
She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 
Sleeps ! 

THE RAINY DAY 

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary ; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary ; 
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 
But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 

And the day is dark and dreary. 5 



\Z SELECTED POEMS 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary ; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary ; 
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, 
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, 
And the days are dark and dreary. 10 

Be still, sad heart ! and cease repining ; 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining ; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, 
Into each life some rain must fall, 

Some days must be dark and dreary. 15 



THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD 

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms ; 

But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 5 
When the death-angel touches those swift keys ! 

What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! 

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, 

The cries of agony, the endless groan, 10 

Which, through the ages that have gone before us, 
In long reverberations reach our own. 

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, 

And loud, amid the universal clamor, 15 

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace 
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, 

And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; 20 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 13 

The tumult of each sacked and burning village ; 

The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns ; 
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage ; 

The wail of famine in beleaguered towns ; 

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, 25 
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 

And ever and anon, in tones of thunder 
The diapason of the cannonade. 

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 

With such accursed instruments as these, 30 

Thou clrownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, 
And j arrest the celestial harmonies ? 

Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 

Given to redeem the human mind from error, 35 

There were no need of arsenals or forts : 

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! 

And every nation, that should lift again 
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 

Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain ! 40 

Down the dark future, through long generations, 
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease ; 

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace ! " 

Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 45 

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies ! 

But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
The holy melodies of love arise. 



CHILDREN 

Come to me, O ye children ! 

For I hear you at your play, 
And the questions that perplexed me 

Have vanished quite away. 



14 SELECTED POEMS 

Ye open the eastern windows, 5 

That look towards the sun, 
Where thoughts are singing swallows 

And the brooks of morning run. 

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, 
In your thoughts the brooklet's flow, 10 

But in mine is the wind of Autumn 
And the first fall of the snow. 

Ah ! what would the world be to us 

If the children were no more ? 
We should dread the desert behind us 15 

Worse than the dark before. 

What the leaves are to the forest, 

With light and air for food, 
Ere their sweet and tender juices 

Have been hardened into wood, — 20 

That to the world are children ; 

Through them it feels the glow 
Of a brighter and sunnier climate 

Than reaches the trunks below. 

Come to me, O ye children ! 25 

And whisper in my ear 
What the birds and the winds are singing 

In your sunny atmosphere. 

For what are all our contrivings, 

And the wisdom of our books, 30 

When compared with your caresses, 

And the gladness of your looks ? 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said ; 
For ye are living poems, 35 

And all the rest are dead. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 15 

THE BELL OF ATRI 

At Atri in Abruzzo, a small town 

Of ancient Roman date, bnt scant renown, 

One of those little places that have run 

Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun, 

And then sat down to rest, as if to say, 5 

" I climb no farther upward, come what may," 

The Re Giovanni, now unknown to fame, 

So many monarch s since have borne the name, 

Had a great bell hung in the market-place, 

Beneath a roof, projecting some small space 10 

By way of shelter from the sun and rain. 

Then rode he through the streets with all his train, 

And with the blast of trumpets loud and long, 

Made proclamation, that whenever wrong 

Was done to any man, he should but ring is 

The great bell in the square, and he, the King, 

Would cause the Syndic to decide thereon. 

Such was the proclamation of King John. 

How swift the happy days in Atri sped, 

What wrongs were righted, need not here be said. 20 

Suffice it that, as all things must decay. 

The hempen rope at length was worn away, 

Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand, 

Loosened and wasted in the ringer's hand, 

Till one, who noted this in passing by, 25 

Mended the rope with braids of briony, 

So that the leaves and tendrils of the vine 

Hung like a votive garland at a shrine. 

By chance it happened that in Atri dwelt 

A knight, with spur on heel and sword in belt, 30 

Who loved to hunt the wild-boar in the w r oods, 

Who loved his falcons with their crimson hoods, 

Who loved his hounds and horses, and all sports 

And prodigalities of camps and courts ; — 

Loved, or had loved them ; for at last, grown old, 35 

His only passion was the love of gold. 



16 SELECTED POEMS 

He sold his horses, sold his hawks and hounds, 
Rented his vineyards and his garden-grounds, 
Kept but one steed, his favorite steed of all, 
To starve and shiver in a naked stall, 40 

And day by day sat brooding in his chair, 
Devising plans how best to hoard and spare. 

At length he said : " What is the use or need 

To keep at my own cost this lazy steed, 

Eating his head off in my stables here, 45 

When rents are low and provender is dear ? 

Let him go feed upon the public ways ; 

I want him only for the holidays." 

So the old steed was turned into the heat 

Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street ; 50 

And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn, 

Barked at by dogs, and torn by brier and thorn. 

One afternoon, as in that sultry clime 

It is the custom in the summer time, 

With bolted doors and window-shutters closed, 55 

The inhabitants of Atri slept or dozed ; 

When suddenly upon their senses fell 

The loud alarum of the accusing bell ! 

The Syndic started from his deep repose, 

Turned on his couch, and listened, and then rose 60 

And donned his robes, and with reluctant pace 

Went panting forth into the market-place, 

Where the great bell upon its cross-beams swung, 

Reiterating with persistent tongue, 

In half- articulate jargon, the old song: 65 

" Some one hath done a wrong, hath done a wrong ! " 

But ere he reached the belfry's light arcade 

He saw, or thought he saw, beneath its shade, 

No shape of human form of woman born, 

But a poor steed dejected and forlorn, 70 

Who with uplifted head and eager eye 

Was tugging at the vines of briony. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 17 

" Domenecldio ! " cried the Syndic straight, 

" This is the Knight of Atri's steed of state ! 

He calls for justice, being sore distressed, 75 

And pleads his cause as loudly as the best." 

Meanwhile from street and lane a noisy crowd 

Had rolled together like a summer cloud, 

And told the story of the wretched beast 

In five-and-twenty different ways at least, 80 

With much gesticulation and appeal 

To heathen gods, in their excessive zeal. 

The Knight was called and questioned ; in reply 

Did not confess the fact, did not deny ; 

Treated the matter as a pleasant jest, 85 

And set at naught the Syndic and the rest, 

Maintaining, in an angry undertone, 

That he should do what pleased him with his own. 

And thereupon the Syndic gravely read 

The proclamation of the King ; then said : 90 

" Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay, 

But cometh back on foot, and begs its way ; 

Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, 

Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds ! 

These are familiar proverbs ; but I fear 95 

They never yet have reached your knightly ear. 

What fair renown, what honor, what repute 

Can come to you from starving this poor brute ? 

He who serves well and speaks not, merits more 

Than they who clamor loudest at the door. 100 

Therefore the law decrees that as this steed 

Served you in youth, henceforth you shall take heed 

To comfort his old age, and to provide 

Shelter in stall, and food and field beside." 

The Knight withdrew abashed ; the people all 105 
Led home the steed in triumph to his stall. 
The King heard and approved, and laughed in glee. 
And cried aloud: "Right well it pleaseth me! 



18 SELECTED POEMS 

Church-bells at best but ring us to the door ; 
But go not in to mass ; my bell doth more : 110 

It cometh into court and pleads the cause 
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws : 
And this shall make, in every Christian clime, 
The Bell of Atri famous for all time." 

THE REPUBLIC 

An excerpt from The Building of the Ship 

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 

Humanity with all its fears, 

With all the hopes of future years, 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 5 

We know what Master laid thy keel, 

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 

What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 

In what a forge and what a heat 10 

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 

Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 

'T is of the wave and not the rock ; 

'T is but the napping of the sail, 

And not a rent made by the gale ! 15 

In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 

In spite of false lights on the shore, 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 20 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 

Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 

Speak and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward 

far away, 
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 19 

Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far or come 

they near ? 
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the 

storm we hear. 

" Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle 

rolls ; 5 

Blood is flowing, men are dying ; God have mercy on 

their souls ! " 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? " Over hill and over 

plain, 
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the 

mountain rain." 

Holy Mother ! keep our brothers ! Look, Ximena, look 

once more. 
M Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as 

before, 10 

Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, 

foot and horse, 
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down 

its mountain course." 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! M Ah ! the smoke has 

rolled away ; 
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the 

ranks of gray. 
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there the troop 

of Minon wheels ; 15 

There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon 

at their heels. 

" Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now retreat and now 

advance ! 
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's 

charging lance ! 
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and 

foot together fall ; 
Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them 

ploughs the Northern ball." 20 



29 SELECTED POEMS 

Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and 

frightful on ! 
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost, and 

who has won ? 
" Alas ! alas ! I know not ; friend and foe together 

fall, 
O'er the dying rush the living : pray, my sisters, for 

them all ! 

" Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting : Blessed Mother, 

save my brain ! 25 

I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps 

of slain. 
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding ; now they fall, 

and strive to rise ; 
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die 

before our eyes ! 

"O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor 

head on my knee ; 
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee ? Canst thou 

hear me ? canst thou see ? 30 

O my husband, brave and gentle ! O my Bernal, look 

once more 
On the blessed cross before thee ! Mercy ! mercy ! all 

is o'er ! " 

Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one 

down to rest ; 
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon 

his breast ; 
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses 

said; 3" 

To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy 

aid. 

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a 

soldier lay, 
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slew 

his life away; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 21 

But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt, 
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol- 
belt. 40 

With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away 
her head ; 

With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon 
her dead ; 

But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his strug- 
gling breath of pain, 

And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips 
again, 

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand 
and faintly smiled ; 45 

Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch 
beside her child ? 

All his stranger words with meaning her woman's 
heart supplied ; 

With her kiss upon his forehead, " Mother ! " mur- 
mured he, and died ! 

" A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, avIio led thee 

forth, 
From some gentle, sad -eyed mother, weeping, lonely, 

in the North ! " 50 

Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him 

with her dead. 
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds 

which bled. 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Like a cloud before 

the wind 
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood 

and death behind ; 
Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in the dust the 

wounded strive ; 55 

Hide your faces, holy angels ! O thou Christ of God, 

forgive ! " 



22 SELECTED POEMS 

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains ! let the cool, 

gray shadows fall ; 
Dying brothers, righting demons, drop thy curtain 

over all ! 
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart 

the battle rolled, 
In the sheath the sabre "rested, and the cannon's lips 

grew cold. 60 

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task 

pursued, 
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and 

faint and lacking food. 
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care 

they hung, 
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and 

Northern tongue. 

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of 

ours; 65 

Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh 

the Eden flowers ; 
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send 

their prayer, 
And still thy white- winged angels hover dimly in our 

air! 



MAUD MULLER 

Maud Muller, on a summer's day, 
Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth 
Of simple beauty and rustic health. 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 

But when she glanced to the far-off town, 
White from its hill-slope looking down, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 23 

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest 

And a nameless longing filled her breast, — 10 

A wish, that she hardly dared to own, 
For something better than she had known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane, 
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 15 

Of the apple-trees to greet the maid, 

And asked a draught from the spring that flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup, 20 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down 
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. 

Thanks ! " said the Judge ; " a sweeter draught 
From a fairer hand was never quaffed." 

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, 25 
Of the singing birds and the humming bees ; 

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether 
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. 

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, 

And her graceful ankles bare and brown ; 30 

And listened, while a pleased surprise 
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. 

At last, like one who for delay 
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 

Maud Muller looked and sighed: " Ah me ! 35 

That I the Judge's bride might be ! 



24 SELECTED POEMS 

" He would dress me up in silks so fine, 
And praise and toast me at his wine. 

" My father should wear a broadcloth coat ; 
My brother should sail a painted boat. 40 

" I 'd dress my mother so grand and gay, 
And the baby should have a new toy each day. 

" And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor, 
And all should bless me who left our door." 

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, 45 
And saw Maud Muller standing still. 

" A form more fair, a face more sweet, 
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. 

" And her modest answer and graceful air 
Show her wise and good as she is fair. 50 

" Would she were mine, and I to-day, 
Like her, a harvester of hay : 

" No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, 
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, 

" But low of cattle and song of birds, 55 

And health and quiet and loving words." 

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, 
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, 

And Maud was left in the field alone. 60 

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, 
When he hummed in court an old love-tune; 

And the young girl mused beside the well 
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 25 

He wedded a wife of richest dower, 65 

Who lived for fashion, as he for power. 

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, 
He watched a picture come and go ; 

And sweet Maud Mutter's hazel eyes 

Looked out in their innocent surprise. 70 

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, 
He longed for the wayside well instead ; 

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms 
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. 

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, 75 
Ah, that I were free again ! 

Free as when I rode that day, 

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay." 

She wedded a man unlearned and poor, 

And many children played round her door. 80 

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, 
Left their traces on heart and brain. 

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot 
On the new- mown hay in the meadow lot, 

And she heard the little spring brook fall 85 

Over the roadside, through the wall, 

In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein ; 

And, gazing down with timid grace, 

She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 90 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls ; 



26 SELECTED POEMS 

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned, 

And for him who sat by the chimney lug, 95 
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw, 
And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life again, 
Saying only, " It might have been." 100 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 

For rich repiner and household drudge! 

God pity them both ! and pity us all, 
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 105 

The saddest are these : " It might have been ! " 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes ; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 

Roll the stone from its grave away ! 110 



THE BAREFOOT BOY 

Blessings on thee, little man, 

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 

With thy turned-up pantaloons, 

And thy merry whistled tunes ; 

With thy red lip, redder still 5 

Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 

With the sunshine on thy face, 

Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; 

From my heart I give thee joy,— 

I was once a barefoot boy ! 10 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 27 

Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 

Only is republican. 

Let the million-dollared ride ! 

Barefoot, trudging at his side, 

Thou hast more than he can buy 15 

In the reach of ear and eye, — 

Outward sunshine, inward joy: 

Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! 

Oh for boyhood's painless play, 

Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 20 

Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 

Knowledge never learned of schools, 

Of the wild bee's morning chase, 

Of the wild-flower's time and place, 

Flight of fowl and habitude 25 

Of the tenants of the wood ; 

How the tortoise bears his shell, 

How the woodchuck digs his cell, 

And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 

How the robin feeds her young, 30 

How the oriole's nest is hung ; 

Where the whitest lilies blow, 

Where the freshest berries grow, 

Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 

Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; 35 

Of the black wasp's cunning way, 

Mason of his walls of clay, 

And the architectural plans 

Of gray hornet artisans ! 

For, eschewing books and tasks, 40 

Nature answers all he asks ; 

Hand in hand with her he walks, 

Face to face with her he talks, 

Part and parcel of her joy, — 

Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 45 

Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 



28 SELECTED POEMS 

Me, their master, waited for. 

I was rich in flowers and trees, 50 

Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 

For my sport the squirrel played, 

Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 

For my taste the blackberry cone 

Purpled over hedge and stone ; 55 

Laughed the brook for my delight 

Through the day and through the night, 

Whispering at the garden wall, 

Talked with me from fall to fall ; 

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 60 

Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 

Mine, on bending orchard trees, 

Apples of Hesperides ! 

Still as my horizon grew, 

Larger grew my riches too ; 65 

All the world I saw or knew 

Seemed a complex Chinese toy, 

Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

Oh for festal dainties spread, 

Like my bowl of milk and bread, — 70 

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 

On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 

O'er me, like a regal tent, 

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 

Purple- curtained, fringed with gold, 75 

Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 

While for music came the play 

Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 

And, to light the noisy choir, 

Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 80 

I was monarch : pomp and joy 

Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man, 

Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 

Though the flinty slopes be hard, 85 

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WIIITTIER 29 

Every morn shall lead thee through 

Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 

Every evening from thy feet 

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: 90 

All too soon these feet must hide 

In the prison cells of pride, 

Lose the freedom of the sod, 

Like a colt's for work be shod, 

Made to tread the mills of toil, 95 

Up and down in ceaseless moil : 

Happy if their track be found 

Never on forbidden ground ; 

Happy if they sink not in 

Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 100 

Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, 

Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 

Pipes of the misty moorlands, 

Voice of the glens and hills ; 
The droning of the torrents, 

The treble of the rills ! 
Not the braes of bloom and heather, 5 

Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, 

Have heard your sweetest strain I 

Dear to the Lowland reaper, 

And plaided mountaineer, — 10 

To the cottage and the castle 

The Scottish pipes are dear ; — 
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 

O'er mountain, loch, and glade ; 
But the sweetest of all music 15 

The pipes at Lucknow played. 

Day by day the Indian tiger 

Louder yelled, and nearer crept ; 



30 Selected poems 

Round and round the jungle-serpent 

Near and nearer circles swept. 20 

" Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, — 
Pray to-day ! " the soldier said ; 

" To-morrow, death 's between us 

And the wrong and shame we dread." 

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, 25 

Till their hope became despair ; 
And the sobs of low bewailing 

Filled the pauses of their prayer. 
Then up spake a Scottish maiden, 

With her ear unto the ground : 30 

" Dinna ye hear it ? — clinna ye hear it ? 

The pipes o' Havelock sound ! " 

Hushed the wounded man his groaning ; 

Hushed the wife her little ones ; 
Alone they heard the drum-roll 35 

And the roar of Sepoy guns. 
But to sounds of home and childhood 

The Highland ear was true ; — 
As her mother's cradle-crooning 

The mountain pipes she knew. 40 

Like the march of soundless music 

Through the vision of the seer, 
More of feeling than of hearing, 

Of the heart than of the ear, 
She knew the droning pibroch, 45 

She knew the Campbell's call: 
" Hark ! hear ye no MacGregor's, 

The grandest o' them all ! " 

Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless, 

And they caught the sound at last ; 50 

Faint and far beyond the Goomtee 
Rose and fell the piper's blast ! 

Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 
Mingled woman's voice and man's ; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 31 

1 God be praised ! — the march of Havelock ! 55 
The piping of the clans ! " 

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 

Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, 

Stinging all the air to life. 60 

But when the far-off dust-cloud 

To plaided legions grew, 
Full tenderly and blithesomely 

The pipes of rescue blew ! 

Round the silver domes of Lucknow, 65 

Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, 
Breathed the air to Britons dearest, 

The air of Auld Lang Syne. 
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums 

Rose that sweet and homelike strain; 70 

And the tartan clove the turban, 

As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. 

Dear to the corn-land reaper 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 75 

The piper's song is dear. 
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch 

O'er mountain, glen, and glade; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The Pipes at Lucknow played ! 80 



MARGUERITE 

Massachusetts Bay, 1760 

The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into blos- 
soms grew ; 

Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins 
knew! 

Sick, in an alien household, the poor French neutral 
lay; 



32 SELECTED POEMS 

Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April 
day, 

Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's 
warp and woof, 5 

On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of 
roof, 

The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the tea-cups on the 

stand, 
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her 

sick hand ! 

What to her was the song of the robin, or warm 

morning light, 
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of 

sound or sight ? 10 

Done was the work of her hands, she had eaten her 

bitter bread ; 
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and 

dead. 

But her soul went back to its child-time ; she saw the 

sun o'erflow 
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over Gas- 

pereau ; 

The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at 
flood, 15 

Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to up- 
land wood ; 

The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise 

and fall, 
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark 

coast- wall. 

She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song 
she sang ; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 33 

And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers 
rang ! 20 

By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing 
the wrinkled sheet, 

Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the ice- 
cold feet. 

With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and long 

abuse, 
By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use. 

Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the mis- 
tress stepped, 25 

Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with 
his hands, and wept. 

Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply, with 

brow a-f rown : 
"What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the charge 

of the town ? " 

" Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know and 

God knows 
I love her, and fain would go with her wherever she 

goes ! 30 

" O mother ! that sweet face came pleading, for love 
so athirst. 

You saw but the town-charge ; I knew her God's an- 
gel at first," 

Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down a 
bitter cry ; 

And awed by the silence and shadow of death draw- 
ing nigh, 

She murmured a psalm of the Bible ; but closer the 
young girl pressed, 35 

With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross to 
her breast. 



34 SELECTED POEMS 

" My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice 

cruel grown. 
"She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her 

alone ! " 

But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his lips 

to her ear, 
And he called back the soul that was passing: 

" Marguerite, do you hear ? " 40 

She paused on the threshold of heaven ; love, pity, 

surprise, 
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of her 

eyes. 

With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never 

her cheek grew red, 
And the words the living long for he spake in the 

ear of the dead. 

And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to 
blossoms grew ; 45 

Of the folded hands and the still face never the 
robins knew ! 

IN SCHOOL-DAYS 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sleeping; 
Around it still the sumachs grow, 

And blackberry- vines are creeping. 

Within, the master's desk is seen, 5 

Deep scarred by raps official ; 
The warping floor, the battered seats, 

The jack-knife's carved initial ; 

The charcoal frescoes on its wall ; 

Its door's worn sill, betraying io 

The feet that, creeping slow to school, 

Went storming out to playing ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 35 

Long years ago a winter sun 

Shone over it at setting ; 
Lit up its western window-panes, 15 

And low eaves' icy fretting. 

It touched the tangled golden curls, 

And brown eyes full of grieving, 
Of one who still her steps delayed 

When all the school were leaving. 20 

For near her stood the little boy 

Her childish favor singled : 
His cap pulled low upon a face 

Where pride and shame were mingled. 

Pushing with restless feet the snow 25 

To right and left, he lingered ; — 
As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue- checked apron fingered. 

He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 

The soft hand's light caressing, 30 

And heard the tremble of her voice, 

As if a fault confessing. 

" I 'm sorry that I spelt the word : 

I hate to go above you, 
Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, — 35 
"Because, you see, I love you! " 

Still memory to a gray-haired man 

That sweet child-face is showing. 
Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 

Have forty years been growing ! 40 

Pie lives to learn, in life's hard school, 

How few who pass above him 
Lament their triumph and his loss, 

Like her, — because they love him. 



36 SELECTED POEMS 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

TO HELEN 

Helen, thy beauty is to me 
Like those Nicean barks of yore, 

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, 

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore 

To his own native shore, 5 

On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
To the glory that was Greece, 
And the grandeur that was Rome. 10 

Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand, 

The agate lamp within thy hand ! 
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
Are Holy-Land ! 15 

ISRAFEL 

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 

" Whose heart-strings are a lute ; " 

None sing so wildly well 

As the angel Israfel, 

And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 5 

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
Of his voice, all mute. 

Tottering above 

In her highest noon, 

The enamored moon 10 

Blushes with love, 

While, to listen, the red levin 

(With the rapid Pleiads, even, 

Which were seven) 

Pauses in Heaven. 15 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 37 

And they say (the starry choir 

And the other listening things) 
That Israfeli's fire 
Is owing to that lyre 

By which he sits and sings — 20 

The trembling living wire 
Of those unusual strings. 

But the skies that angel trod; 

Where deep thoughts are a duty — 
Where Love 's a grown-up God — 25 

Where the Houri glances are 
Imbued with all the beauty 

Which we worship in a star. 

Therefore, thou art not wrong, 

Israfeli, who despisest 30 

An unimpassioned song ; 
To thee the laurels belong, 

Best bard, because the wisest ! 
Merrily live, and Ion 



ft 



The ecstasies above 35 

With thy burning measures suit — 

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, 
With the fervor of thy lute — 
Well may the stars be mute ! 

Yes, Heaven is thine ; but this 40 

Is a world of sweets and sours ; 

Our flowers are merely — flowers, 
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 

Is the sunshine of ours. 

If I could dwell 45 

Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
He might not sing so wildly well 

A mortal melody, 
While a bolder note than this might swell 50 

From my lyre within the sky. 



38 SELECTED POEMS 



THE CITY IN THE SEA 

Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne 

In a strange city lying alone 

Far down within the dim West, 

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best 

Have gone to their eternal rest. 5 

There shrines and palaces and towers 

(Time- eaten towers that tremble not !) 

Resemble nothing that is ours. 

Around, by lifting winds forgot, 

Resignedly beneath the sky 10 

The melancholy waters lie. 

No rays from the holy heaven come down 

On the long night-time of that town ; 

But light from out the lurid sea 

Streams up the turrets silently — 15 

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free — 

Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — 

Up fanes — up Babylon- like walls — 

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers — 20 

Up many and many a marvellous shrine 

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 

The viol, the violet, and the vine. 

Resignedly beneath the sky 

The melancholy waters lie. 25 

So blend the turrets and shadows there 

That all seem pendulous in air, 

While from a proud tower in the town 

Death looks gigantically down. 

There open fanes and gaping graves 30 

Yawn level with the luminous waves ; 

But not the riches there that lie 

In each idol's diamond eye — 

Not the gay ly- jewelled dead — 

Tempt the waters from their bed ; 35 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 39 

For no ripples curl, alas ! 

Along that wilderness of glass — 

No swellings tell that winds may be 

Upon some far-off happier sea — 

No heavings hint that winds have been 40 

On seas less hideously serene. 

But lo, a stir is in the air ! 

The wave — there is a movement there! 

As if the towers had thrust aside, 

In slightly sinking, the dull tide — 45 

As if their tops had feebly given 

A void within the filmy Heaven ! 

The waves have now a redder glow 

The hours are breathing faint and low — 
And when, amid no earthly moans, 50 

Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
Shall do it reverence. 



TO ONE IN PARADISE 

Thou wast all that to me, love, 

For which my soul did pine — 
A green isle in the sea, love, 

A fountain and a shrine, 
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 5 

And all the flowers were mine. 

Ah, dream too bright to last ! 

Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
But to be overcast ! 

A voice from out the Future cries, 10 

" 4 On ! on ! " — but o'er the Past 

(Dim gulf ! ) my spirit hovering lies 
Mute, motionless, aghast ! 

For, alas ! alas ! with me 

The light of Life is o'er ! 15 

No more — no more — no more — " 



40 SELECTED POEMS 

(Such language holds the solemn sea 
To the sands upon the shore) 

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 

Or the stricken eagle soar ! 20 

And all my days are trances, 

And all my nightly dreams 
Are where thy gray eye glances, 

And where thy footstep gleams — 
In what ethereal dances, 25 

By what eternal streams. 



THE RAVEN 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak 
and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten 
lore — 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came 
a tapping, 

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber 
door. 

" 'T is some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at my cham- 
ber door — 5 
Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was in the bleak Decem- 
ber, 

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost 
upon the floor. 

Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I had sought 
to borrow 

From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the 
lost Lenore — 10 

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels 
name Lenore — 
Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple 
curtain 



EDGAR ALLEN POE 41 

Thrilled me — filled me with, fantastic terrors never 

felt before ; 
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood 

repeating 15 

" 'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber 

door — 
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber 

door; 
This it is and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger ; hesitating then no 
longer, 

" Sir," said I, " or Madam, truly your forgiveness I 
implore ; 20 

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came 
rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping,, tapping at my cham- 
ber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you " — here I opened 
wide the door : 
Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there 

wondering, fearing, 25 

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to 

dream before ; 
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave 

no token, 
And the only word there spoken was the whispered 

word, " Lenore ! " 
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the 

word " Lenore ! " 
Merely this and nothing more. 30 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me 
burning, 

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than 
before. 

" Surely," said I, " surely that is something at my win- 
dow lattice : 



42 SELECTED POEMS 

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery 

explore — 
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery 

explore ; — 35 

'T is the wind and nothing more ! " 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt 

and flutter 
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days 

of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute stopped 

or stayed he ; 
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my 

chamber door — 40 

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber 

door — 
Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into 
smiling, 

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it 
wore, 

4 Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, — thou," I 
said, " art sure no craven, 45 

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the 
Nightly shore — 

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plu- 
tonian shore ! " 
Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse 
so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy 
bore ; 50 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his cham- 
ber door — 

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his 
chamber door, 
With such name as " Nevermore." 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 43 

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke 

only 55 

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did 

outpour. 
Nothing further then he uttered — not a feather then 

he fluttered — 
Till I scarcely more than muttered, " Other friends 

have flown before — 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have 

flown before." 
Then the bird said, " Nevermore." 60 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly 

spoken, 
" Doubtless," said I, " what it utters is its only stock 

and store 
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful 

Disaster 
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one 

burden bore — 
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden 

bore 65 

Of ' Never — nevermore.' " 

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smil- 
ing, 

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, 
and bust and door ; 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to 
linking 

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of 
yore — 70 

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and omin- 
ous bird of yore 
Meant in croaking " Nevermore." 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable ex- 
pressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my 
bosom's core : 



44 SELECTED POEMS 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease 
reclining 75 

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light 
gloated o'er, 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light 
gloating o'er, 
She shall press, ah, nevermore! 

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from 

an unseen censer 
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the 

tufted floor. 80 

" Wretch," I cried, " thy God hath lent thee — by these 

angels he hath sent thee 
Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories of 

Lenore ; 
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost 

Lenore ! " 
Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 

* 4 Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil ! prophet still, if bird 
or devil! — 85 

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed 
thee here ashore, 

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land en- 
chanted — 

On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I 
implore — 

Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell 
me, I implore ! " 
Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 90 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if 

bird or devil ! 
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God 

we both adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant 

Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name 

Lenore — 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 45 

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels 
name Lenore." 95 

Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 



" Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend ! " I 
shrieked, upstarting — 

" Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plu- 
tonian shore ! 

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul 
hath spoken ! 

Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust above 
my door ! 100 

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form 
from off my door ! " 
Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is 

sitting 
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber 

door ; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that 

is dreaming, 105 

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his 

shadow on the floor ; 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating 

on the floor 
Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 



ULALUME 

The skies they were ashen and sober ; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere — 

The leaves they were withering and sere ; 
It was night in the lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year ; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid region of Weir — 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 



46 SELECTED POEMS 

Here once, through an alley Titanic, 10 

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — 

Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
These were days when my heart was volcanic 

As the scoriae rivers that roll — 

As the lavas that restlessly roll 15 

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 

In the ultimate climes of the pole — 
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 

In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 20 

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere — 
Our memories were treacherous and sere — 

For we knew not the month was October, 
And we marked not the night of the year — 
(Ah, night of all nights in the year !) 25 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber — 

(Though once we had journeyed down here) — 

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 30 

And star-dials pointed to morn — 

As the star-dials hinted of morn — 
At the end of our path a liquescent 

And nebulous lustre was born, 
Out of which a miraculous crescent 35 

Arose with a duplicate horn — 
Astarte's bediamonded crescent 

Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said — " She is warmer than Dian : 

She rolls through an ether of sighs — 40 

•She revels in a region of sighs : 
She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
And has come past the stars of the Lion 

To point us the path to the skies — 45 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 47 

To the Lethean peace of the skies — 
Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

To shine on us with her bright eyes — 
Come up through the lair of the Lion, 

With love in her luminous eyes." 50 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

Said — " Sadly this star I mistrust — 
Her pallor I strangely mistrust : — 

Oh, hasten ! — oh, let us not linger ! 

Oh, fly ! — let us fly ! — for we must." 55 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 
Wings until they trailed in the dust — 

In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

Plumes till they trailed in the dust — 

Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 60 

I replied — " This is nothing but dreaming : 

Let us on by this tremulous light ! 

Let us bathe in this crystalline light ! 
Its Sibyllic splendor is beaming 

With Hope and in Beauty to-night : — 65 

See ! — it flickers up the sky through the night ! 
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 

And be sure it will lead us aright — 
We safely may trust to a gleaming 

That cannot but guide us aright, 70 

Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
And tempted her out of her gloom — 
And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 75 

But were stopped by the door of a tomb — ■ 
By the door of a legended tomb ; 

And I said — " What is written, sweet sister, 
On the door of this legended tomb ? " 
She replied — " Ulalume — Ulalume — 80 

'T is the vault of thy lost Ulalume ! " 



48 SELECTED POEMS 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 
As the leaves that were crisped and sere — 
As the ] eaves that were withering and sere, 

And I cried — " It was surely October 85 

On this very night of last year 
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here — 
That I brought a dread burden clown here — 
On this night of all nights in the year, 
Ah, what demon has tempted me here ? 90 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — 
This misty mid region of Weir — 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 



THE BELLS 

I 
Hear the sledges with the bells — 
Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night ! 5 

While the stars that oversprinkle 
AH the heavens, seem to twinkle 
With a crystalline delight ; 
Keeping time, time, time, 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 10 

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

II 

Hear the mellow wedding bells — 15 

Golden bells ! 
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight ! — 

From the molten-golden notes, 20 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 49 

And all in tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon ! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 25 

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! 
How it swells ! 
How it dwells 
On the future ! — how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 30 

To the swinging and the ringing 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! 35 



III 
Hear the loud alarum bells — 
Brazen bells ! 
What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells ! 
In the startled ear of night 

How they scream out their affright! 40 

Too much horrified to speak, 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune, 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 46 

With a desperate desire, 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit, or never, 
By the side of the pale-faced moon. 50 

Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 
What a tale their terror tells 
Of Despair ! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 
What a horror they outpour 55 

On the bosom of the palpitating air! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 



50 SELECTED POEMS 

By the twanging-, 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows ; fio 

Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling, 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the 
bells — 65 

Of the bells— 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells ! 

IV 

Hear the tolling of the bells — 70 

Iron bells ! 
WJiat a world of solemn thought their monody com- 
pels! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone! 75 

For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people — ah, the people — 
They that dwell up in the steeple, 80 

All alone, 
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, 

In that muffled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 

On the human heart a stone — 85 

They are neither man nor woman — 
They are neither brute nor human — 

They are Ghouls : — 
And their king it is who tolls : — 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 90 

Rolls 
A psean from the bells ! 
And his merry bosom swells 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 51 

With the psean of the bells ! 
And he dances, and he yells : 95 

Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the paean of the bells — 
Of the bells : 
Keeping time, time, time, 100 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the throbbing of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 

To the sobbing of the bells : — 
Keeping time, time, time, 105 

As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme, 

To the rolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells : — 

To the tolling of the bells — 110 

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 



ANNABEL LEE 

It was many and many a year ago, 

In a kingdom by the sea 
That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee ; 
And this maiden she lived with no other thought 5 

Than to love and be loved by me. 

She was a child and /was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea, 
But we loved with a love that was more than love — 

I and my Annabel Lee — 10 

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 

Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that, long ago, 
In this kingdom by the sea, 



52 SELECTED FOEMS 

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 15 

My beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
So that her high-born kinsmen came 

And bore her away from me, 
To shut her up in a sepulchre 

In this kingdom by the sea. 20 

The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 

Went envying her and me — 
Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men know, 

In this kingdom by the sea) 
That the wind came out of the cloud by night, 25 

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love 

Of those who were older than we — 

Of many far wiser than we — 
And neither the angels in heaven above, 30 

Nor the demons down under the sea, 
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : — 

For the moon never beams, without bringing me 
dreams 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee, 35 

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, 

In the sepulchre there by the sea — 40 

In her tomb by the sounding sea. 



ELDORADO 

Gayly bedight, 

A gallant knight, 
In sunshine and in shadow, 

Had journeyed long, 

Singing a song, 
In search of Eldorado. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 53 

But he grew old — 

This knight so bold — 
And o'er his heart a shadow 

Fell, as he found 10 

No spot of ground 
That looked like Eldorado. 

And, as his strength 

Failed him at length, 
He met a pilgrim shadow — 15 

" Shadow," said he, 

" Where can it be — 
This land of Eldorado? " 

" Over the Mountains 

Of the Moon, 20 

Down the Valley of the Shadow, 

Ride, boldly ride," 

The shade replied, — 
" If you seek for Eldorado." 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
TO THE DANDELION 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and full of pride uphold, 

High-hearted buccaneers, o'er joyed that they 5 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

Which not the rich earth's ample round 
May match in ivealth, thou art more dear to me 
Than all the prouder summer- blooms may be. 

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow 10 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 



54 SELECTED POEMS 

'T is the Spring's largess, which she scatters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 15 

Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 20 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee 
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 

In the white-lily's breezy tent, 25 

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 

Where, as the breezes pass, 30 

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 

That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 35 

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with 
thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 40 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 45 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art ! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 55 

Thou teachest me to deem 
More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 50 

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 
On all these living pages of God's book. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad 

earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east 

to west, 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul 

within him climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem 

of Time. 5 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the in- 
stantaneous throe, 

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems 
to and fro ; 

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, 

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute 
lips apart, 

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps be- 
neath the Future's heart. 10 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a 
chill, 

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympa- 
thies with God 

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up 
by the sod, 

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the 
nobler clod. 15 



56 SELECTED POEMS 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears 

along, 
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of 

right or wrong ; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's 

vast frame 
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of 

joy or shame; — 
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal 

claim. 20 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to 

decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or 

evil side ; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each 

the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 

upon the right, 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness 

and that light. 25 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou 

shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust 

against our land? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone 

is strong, 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her 

throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from 

all wrong. 30 

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-mo- 
ments see, 

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through 
Oblivion's sea ; 

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding 
cry 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 57 

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose 

feet earth's chaff must fly ; 
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment 

hath passed by. 35 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages 

but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems 

and the Word ; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 

throne, — 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the 

• dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 

above his own. 40 

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what 

is great, 
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron 

helm of fate, 
But the soul is still oracular ; amid the market's din, 
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave 

within, — 
"They enslave their children's children who make 

compromise with sin." 45 

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant 

brood, 
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have 

drenched the earth with blood, 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our 

purer day, 
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable 

prey;— 
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless 

children play? 50 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her 
wretched crust, 



58 SELECTED POEMS 

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is pros- 
perous to be just ; 

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward 
stands aside, 

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, 

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had 
denied. 55 

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were 
souls that stood alone, 

While the men they agonized for hurled the contu- 
melious stone, 

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden 
beam incline 

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith 
divine, 

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's 
supreme design. 60 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet 
I track. 

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that 
turns not back, 

And these mounts of anguish number how each gen- 
eration learned 

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet- 
hearts hath burned 

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his 
face to heaven upturned. 65 

For Humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the mar- 
tyr stands, 

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his 
hands ; 

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling 
fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe 
return 

To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden 
urn. 70 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 59 

'T is as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves 

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, 

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present 

light a crime ; — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by 

men behind their time ? 
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make 

Plymouth Rock sublime ? 75 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old icono- 
clasts, 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the 
Past's ; 

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that 
hath made us free, 

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender 
spirits flee 

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove 
them across the sea. 80 

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are 

traitors to our sires, 
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit 

altar-fires ; 
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our 

haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral 

lamps away 
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of 

to-day? 85 

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient 
good uncouth ; 

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep 
abreast of Truth ; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must 
Pilgrims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the 
desperate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood- 
rusted key. 90 



60 SELECTED POEMS 

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST 

Over his keys the musing organist, 

Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
First lets his fingers wander as they list, 

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay : 
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 5 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 

Along the wavering vista of his dream. 



Not only around our infancy 

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie ; 10 

Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 

We Sinais climb and know it not. 

Over our manhood bend the skies ; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies ; 15 

With our faint hearts the mountain strives ; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite ; 
And to our age's drowsy blood 

Still shouts the "inspiring sea. 20 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; 
. The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 

We bargain for the graves we lie in ; 
At the devil's booth are all things sold, 25 

Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ; 

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we 'buy with a whole soul's tasking : 

'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
'T is only God may be had for the' asking ; 30 

No price is set on the lavish summer : 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 61 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 35 

And over it softly her warm ear lays ; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; 
The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, _ 45 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace ; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 

And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,— 55 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; ^ 60 

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it ; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green ; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 65 

How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing ; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 
That dandelions are blossoming near, _ 70 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 



C2 SELECTED POEMS 

That the river is bluer than the sky, 

That the robin is plastering his house hard by ; 

And if the breeze kept the good news back, 

For other couriers we should not lack; 75 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing ! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80 

Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving ; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 

'T is the natural way of living : 85 

Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow ? 95 

PART FIRST 



My golden spurs now bring to me, 

And bring to me my richest mail, 
For to-morrow I go over land and sea 

In search of the Holy Grail ; 
Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 

Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
Till I begin my vow to keep ; 
Here on the rushes will I sleep, 
And perchance there may come a vision true 
Ere day create the world anew." 105 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 63 

Slowly Sir LaunfaFs eyes grew dim, 
Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 
And into his soul the vision flew. 



II 

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 

In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 

The little birds sang as if it were 

The one day of summer in all the year, 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees ; 
The castle alone in the landscape lay 
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray : 115 

'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, 
And never its gates might opened be, 
Save to lord or lady of high degree ; 
Summer besieged it on every side, 
But the churlish stone her assaults defied ; 120 

She could not scale the chilly wall, 
Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall 
Stretched left and right, 
Over the hills and out of sight ; 

Green and broad was every tent, 125 

And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 

ill 

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 

In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 

In his siege of three hundred summers long, 
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 135 

Had cast them forth : so, young and strong, 
And lightsome as a locust-leaf, 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, 
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 



64 SELECTED POEMS 

IV 

It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 

And morning in the young knight's heart ; 

Only the castle moodily 

Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 
And gloomed by itself apart ; 

The season brimmed all other things up . 145 

Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 



As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome 
gate, 
He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, 
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate ; 
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came ; 150 

The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall ; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 155 

Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 



VI 

The leper raised not the gold from the dust : 

" Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 

Better the blessing of the poor, 

Though I turn me empty from his door ; 

That is no true alms which the hand can hold ; 

He gives nothing but worthless gold 

Who gives from a sense of duty ; 165 

But he who gives but a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, — ■ 
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms*, 170 

The heart outstretches its eager palms, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 65 

For a god goes with it and makes it store 

To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 



PRELUDE TO PART SECOND 

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers old ; 175 
On open wold and hilltop bleak 

It had gathered all the cold, 
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek ; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare ; 180 
The little brook heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof ; 
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
He groined his arches and matched his beams ; 
Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185 

As the lashes of light that trim the stars : 
He sculptured every summer delight 
In his halls and chambers out of sight ; 
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 

Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees 
Bending to counterfeit a breeze ; 
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
But silvery mosses that downward grew ; 
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 195 

With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf ; 
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear. 
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here 
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200 

That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
And made a star of every one : 
No mortal builder's most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice ; 
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 205 

In his depths serene through the summer day, 
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 
Lest the happy model should be lost, 



66 SELECTED POEMS 

Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 

By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 

Within the hall are song and laughter, 

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, 
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With lightsome green of ivy and holly ; 
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 

Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide ; 
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind ; 
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 

Hunted to death in its galleries blind ; 220 

And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 

Like herds of startled deer. 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225 

Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 

A Christmas carol of its own, 230 

Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was " Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless ! " 
The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235 

The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 



PART SECOND 

I 
There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240 

The bare boughs rattled shudderingly ; 
The river was dumb and could not speak, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL G7 

For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun ; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun ; 245 
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 



II 

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 

For another heir in his earldom sate ; 

An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 

He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 

Little he recked of liis earldom's loss, 

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 255 

But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 

The badge of the suffering and the poor. 

in 

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 

Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 

For it was just at the Christmas time ; 260 

So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 

And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 

In the light and warmth of long-ago ; 

He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 

O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 265 

Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 

He can count the camels in the sun, 

As over the red-hot sands they pass 

To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 

And with its own self like an infant played, 

And waved its signal of palms. 

IV 

" For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms ; " — 

The happy camels may reach the spring, 

But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 275 



68 SELECTED POEMS 

The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 



And Sir Launf al said, " I behold in thee 280 

An image of Him who died on the tree ; 

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, 

Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, 

And to thy life were not denied 

The wounds in the hands and feet and side : 285 

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me ; 

Behold, through him, I give to Thee ! " 

VI 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 

He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
The heart within him was ashes and dust ; 
He i3arted in twain his single crust, 295 

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink : 
'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 

'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 

And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. 

VII 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 

A light shone round about the place ; 

The leper no longer crouched at his side, 

But stood before him glorified, 305 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, — 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL GO 

Himself the Gate whereby men can 
Enter the temple of God in Man. 

VIII 

His words were shed softer than leaves from the 
pine, 310 

And they fell on Sir Lannfal as snows on the brine, 
That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon ; 
And the voice that was softer than silence said, 
" Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! 315 

In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail ; 
Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now ; 
This crust is My body broken for thee, 320 

This water His blood that died on the tree ; 
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need ; 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare ; 325 

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." 

IX 

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : 

" The Grail in my castle here is found ! 

Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 

Let it be the spider's banquet-hall ; 

He must be fenced with stronger mail 

Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 

x 

The castle gate stands open now, 

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 335 

As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough ; 

No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er ; 
When the first poor outcast went in at the door, 



70 SELECTED POEMS 

She entered with him in disguise, 340 

And mastered the fortress by surprise; 

There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 

She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; 

The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 

Has hall and bower at his command ; 345 

And there 's no poor man in the North Countree. 

But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 



THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 

The snow had begun in the gloaming, 

And busily all the night 
Had been heaping field and highway 

With a silence deep and white. 

Every pine and fir and hemlock 5 

Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
Was ridged inch deep with pearl. 

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 

Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, 10 

The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, 
And still fluttered down the snow. 

I stood and watched by the window 

The noiseless work of the sky, 
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 15 

Like brown leaves whirling by. 

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 

Where a little headstone stood ; 
How the flakes were folding it gently, 

As did robins the babes in the wood. 20 

Up spoke our own little Mabel, 

Saying, " Father, who makes it snow ? " 

And I told of the good All-father 
Who cares for us here below. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 71 

Again I looked at the snow-fall, 25 

And thought of the leaden sky 
That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 

When that mound was heaped so high. 

I remembered the gradual patience 

That fell from that cloud like snow, 30 

Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar that renewed our woe. 

And again to the child I whispered, 
" The snow that husheth all, 
Darling, the merciful Father 35 

Alone can make it fall!*' 

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her ; 

And she, kissing back, could not know 
That my kiss was given to her sister, 

Folded close under deepening snow. 40 

THE COURTIN' 

God makes sech nights, all white an' still 

Fur 'z you can look or listen, 
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, 

All silence an' all glisten. 

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 5 

An' peeked in thru' the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 

'ith no one nigh to hender. 

A fireplace filled the room's one side 

With half a cord o' wood in — 10 

There war n't no stoves (tell comfort died) 
To bake ye to a pucldin'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 

Towards the pootiest, bless her, 
An' leetle flames danced all about 15 

The chiny on the dresser. 



72 SELECTED POEMS 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 

Fetched back f'om Concord busted. 20 

The very room, coz she was in, 
Seemed warm f'om floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez the apples she was peelin'. 

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look 25 

On sech a blessed cretur, — 
A dogrose blushin' to a brook 

Ain't modester nor sweeter. 



He was six foot o' man, A 1, 
Clear grit an' human natur', — 

None could n't quicker pitch a ton 
Nor clror a furrer straighter. 



30 



He 'cl sparked it with full twenty gals, 
Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, clruv 'em, 

Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — ' 35 
All is, he could n't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould run 

All crinkly like curled maple, — 
The side she breshed felt full o' sun 

Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 40 

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir ; 
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, 

She knowed the Lord was nigher. 

An' she 'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, 45 

When her new meetin'-bunnet 
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair 

O 1 blue eyes sot upun it. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 73 

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some ! 

She seemed to 've gut a new soul, 50 

For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come, 

Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, 

A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelins flew 55 

Like sparks in burnt- up paper. 

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, 

Some doubtfle o' the sekle, — 
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 

But hern went pity Zekle. 60 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work, 
Parin' away like murder. 

' You want to see my Pa, I s'pose ? " 65 

" Wal ... no ... I come clasignin' " — 
' To see my Ma ? She 's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." 

To say why gals acts so or so, 

Or don't, 'ould be persumiu' ; 70 

Mebby to mean yes an' say no 

Comes nateral to women. 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 

Then stood a spell on t' other, 
An' on which one he felt the wust 75 

He could n't ha' told ye nuther. 

Says he, " I 'd better call agin ; " 
Says she, " Think likely, Mister : " 

Thet last word pricked him like a pin, 

An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. 80 



74 SELECTED POEMS 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

For she was jes' the quiet kind 85 

Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 

Snowhid in Jenooary. 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued 
Too tight for all expressin', 90 

Tell mother see how metters stood, 
An' gin 'em both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
An' all I know is they was cried 95 

In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

An excerpt from the Ode recited at the Harvard 
Commemoration, July 21, 1865 

Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 
So bountiful is Fate ; 

But then to stand beside her, 5 

When craven churls deride her, 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 
This shows, me thinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 10 

Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 

Such was he, our Martyr- Chief, 

Whom late the Nation lie had led, 15 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 75 

With ashes on her head, 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and bnrn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 20 

Nature, they say, doth dote, 

And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan, 

Repeating us by rote : 
For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw, 25 

And choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 30 

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 

Not lured by any cheat of birth, 

But by his clear-grained human worth, 35 

And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 

They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 

And supple-tempered will 40 

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and 
thrust. 

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 

Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 

A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 

Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 45 

Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mormvard still, 

Ere any names of Serf and Peer 50 

Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will ; 

Here was a type of the true elder race, 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 



76 SELECTED POEMS 

I praise him not ; it were too late ; 55 

And some innative weakness there must be 
in him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 

So always firmly he : 60 

He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 65 

Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence conies ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 70 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

THANATOPSIS 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 5 

Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 10 

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; — 
Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 15 
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 77 

Comes a still voice — Yet a few clays, and thee 

The all-beholding sun shall see no more 

In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 20 

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 

Thine individual being, shalt thou go 25 

To mix forever with the elements, 

To be a brother to the insensible rock 

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 

Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 30 

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, 35 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
The venerable woods — rivers that move 40 

In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, v 45 

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 
Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings 50 

Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous ivoods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, 
Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there ; 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 55 



78 SELECTED POEMS 

The flight of years began, have laid them down 

In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 

So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw 

In silence from the living, and no friend 

Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 60 

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 

When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 

Plod on, and each one as before will chase 

His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 

Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 65 

And make their bed with thee. As the long train 

Of ages glides away, the sons of men, 

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes 

In the full strength of years, matron and maid, 

The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man — 70 

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 

By those, who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 75 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 80 

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A 
WOOD 

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 
No school of long experience, that the world 
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 5 

And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade 
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze 
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 79 

Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men, 10 

And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse 

Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 

But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt 

Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades 

Are still the abodes of gladness ; the thick roof 15 

Of green and stirring branches is alive 

And musical with birds, that sing and sport 

In wantonness of spirit ; while below 

The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, 

Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade 20 

Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam 

That waked them into life. Even the green trees 

Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend 

To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 

Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 25 

Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy 

Existence, than the winged plunderer 

That sucks its sweets. The mossy rocks themselves, 

And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees 

That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude 30 

Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, 

With all their earth upon them, twisting high, 

Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 

Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed 

Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, 35 

Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 

In its own being. Softly tread the marge, 

Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren 

That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, 

That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, 40 

Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass 

Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace. 

TO A WATERFOWL 

Whither, midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 



80 SELECTED POEMS 

Vainly the fowler's eye 5 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10 

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean-side? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
The desert and illimitable air — 15 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 20 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 25 

Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 31 

Will lead my steps aright. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 81 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
THE RHODORA: 

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? 

Ix May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 5 

Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 
Here might the redbird come his plumes to cool, 
And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 10 

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : 
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 
I never thought to ask, I never knew : 
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 15 

The self-same Power that brought me there brought 
you. 

CONCORD HYMN 

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE 
MONUMENT, JULY 4, 1837 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept ; 5 

Alike the conquerer silent sleeps : 

And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 



82 SELECTED POEMS 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
We set to-day a votive stone ; 10 

That memory may their deed redeem, 
When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 15 

The shaft we raise to them and thee. 



FABLE 

The mountain and the squirrel 
Had a quarrel, 

And the former called the latter " Little Prig " ; 
Bun replied, 
" You are doubtless very big ; 5 

But all sorts of things and weather 
Must be taken in together, 
To make up a year 
And a sphere. 

And I think it no disgrace 10 

To occupy my place. 
If I 'm not so large as you, 
You are not so small as I, 
And not half so spry. 

I '11 not deny you make 15 

A very pretty squirrel track ; 
Talents differ ; all is well and wisely put ; 
If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
Neither can you crack a nut." 

FORBEARANCE 

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk ? 
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ? 
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust ? 
And loved so well a high behavior, 5 

In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 83 

Nobility more nobly to repay ? 

O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine ! 



MUSIC 

Let rae go where'er I will, 

I hear a sky-born music still : 

It sounds from all things old, 

It sounds from all things young, 

From all that 's fair, from all that 's foul, 5 

Peals out a cheerful song. 

It is not only in the rose, 

It is not only in the bird, 

Not only where the rainbow glows, 

Nor in the song of woman heard, 10 

But in the darkest, meanest things 

There alway, alway something sings. 

'T is not in the high stars alone, 

Nor in the cup of budding flowers, 

Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, 15 

Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, 

But in the mud and scum of things 

There alway, alway something sings. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
OLD IRONSIDES 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky ; 
Beneath it rung the battle shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar ; — 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more. 



84 SELECTED POEMS 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 

Where knelt the vanquished foe, 10 

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 

And waves were white below, 
No more shall feel the victor's tread, 

Or know the conquered knee ; 
The harpies of the shore shall pluck 15 

The eagle of the sea ! 

Oh, better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ; 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave ; 20 

Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail, 
And give her to the god of storms, 

The lightning and the gale ! 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 5 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming 
hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell, 10 

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 15 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 85 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 20 

Stretched in his last- found home, and knew the old 
no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap, forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 25 

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that 
sings : — 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 30 

Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 34 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE 

OR, THE WONDERFUL " ONE-HOSS SHAY " 

A LOGICAL STORY 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 

That was built in such a logical way 

It ran a hundred years to a day, 

And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay, 

I '11 tell you what happened without delay, .5 

Scaring the parson into fits, 

Frightening people out of their wits, — 

Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. 

Georgius Secundus was then alive, — 10 



86 SELECTED POEMS 

Snuffy old drone from the German hive ! 

That was the year when Lisbon-town 

Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 

And Braddock's army was done so brown, 

Left without a scalp to its crown. 15 

It was on the terrible Earthquake-day 

That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 

There is always somewhere a weakest spot, — 

In hub, tire, felloe, in spring, or thill, 20 

In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, 

In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still, 

Find it somewhere you must and will, — 

Above or below, or within or without, — 

And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, 25 

That a chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. 

But the Deacon swore (as deacons do, 
With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell yeou") 
He would build one shay to beat the taown 
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ; 30 

It should be so built that it could ' rH break daown: 
" Fur," said the Deacon, " 't 's mighty plain 
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 
V the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 35 

T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." 

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 

Where he could find the strongest oak, 

That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, — 

That was for spokes and floor and sills ; 40 

He sent for lancewood to make the thills ; 

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, 

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, 

But lasts like iron for things like these ; 

The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum,"— 45 

Last of its timber, — they couldn't sell 'em, 

Never an axe had seen their chips, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 87 

And the wedges flew from between their lips, 

Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ; 

Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 50 

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 

Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; 

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide ; 

Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 

Found in the pit when the tanner died. 55 

That was the way he " put her through." 

There ! " said the Deacon, " naow she '11 dew ! " 

Do ! I tell you, I rather guess 

She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 60 

Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 

Children and grandchildren — where were they ? 

But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay 

As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! 

Eighteen hundred ; — it came and found 65 

The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; — 
' Hahnsum kerridge " they called it then. 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; — 
Running as usual ; much the same. 70 

Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then come fifty, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

Without both feeling and looking queer. 75 

In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large ; 

Take it. — You 're welcome. — No extra charge.) 

Fiest of November, — the earthquake-day, — 80 
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, 
A general flavor of mild decay, 



88 SELECTED POEMS 

But nothing local, as one may say. 

There could n't be, '■ — for the Deacon's art 

Had made it so like in every part 85 

That there was n't a chance for one to start. 

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 

And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 

And the panels just as strong as the floor, 

And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, 90 

And the back crossbar as strong as the fore, 

And spring and axle and hub encore. 

And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt 

In another hour it will be worn out! 

First of November, 'Fifty-five ! 95 

This morning the parson takes a drive. 
Now, small boys, get out of the way I 
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
Drawn by a rat- tailed, ewe-necked bay. 
" Hudclup ! " said the parson. — Off went they. 100 
The parson was working his Sunday's text, — 
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed 
At what the — Moses — was coming next. 
All at once the horse stood still, 
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. 105 

First a shiver, and then a thrill, 
Then something decidedly like a spill, — 
And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 
At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, — 
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! — 110 

What do you think the parson found, 
When he got up and stared around? 
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground ! 
You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, 115 

How it went to pieces all at once, — 
All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay 

Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 120 



WALT WHITMAN 89 

WALT WHITMAN 

CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD 

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green 
islands, 

They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the 
sun — hark to the musical clank, 

Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loi- 
tering stop to drink, 

Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person 
a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles, 

Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just 
entering the ford — while, 

Scarlet and blue and snowy white, 

The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind. 

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought 

is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exult- 
ing, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim 
and daring ; 

But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 5 

O the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle 

trills, 10 

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the 

shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces 

turning; 



90 SELECTED POEMS 

Here Captain ! clear father ! 
This arm beneath your head ! 

It is some dream that on the deck, 15 
You Ve fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and 

still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor 

will, 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed 

and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object 
won ; 20 

Exult O shores, and ring O bells ! 
But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 



HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY 

May 4, 1865 

Hush'd be the camps to-day, 

And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons, 
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate, 
Our dear commander's death. 

No more for him life's stormy conflicts, 5 

Nor victory, nor defeat — no more time's dark events, 
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. 

But sing, poet, in our name, 

Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller 
in camps, know it truly. 

As they invault the coffin there, 10 

Sing — as they close the doors of earth upon him — 

one verse, 
For the heavy hearts of soldiers. 



WALT WHITMAN 91 



A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER 

A noiseless patient spider, 

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood iso- 
lated, 

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, 

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of 
itself, 

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 5 

And you my soul where you stand, 

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, 

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the 

spheres to connect them, 
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile 

anchor hold, 
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, 

O my soul. 10 

THE FIRST DANDELION 

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerg- 
ing, 

As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever 
been, 

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass — inno- 
cent, golden, calm as the dawn, 

The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face. 



HELPS IN READING 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

A PSALM OF LIFE 

LINE 

Psalmist. Longfellow himself. He had been greatly de- 
pressed and had written A Psalm of Death. 
7 Dust thou art. Genesis in, 19: " . . . For dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return." 
18 Bivouac. A temporary encampment without shelter. 

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 

The Wreck of the Hesperus was written on December 29, 
1839, twelve days after Longfellow had read news of ter- 
rible shipwrecks along the New England coast, many 
of which took place on a reef called " Norman's Woe." 
The schooner Hesperus was among the wrecked vessels. 
One of the bodies washed ashore near Gloucester was 
lashed to a piece of wreckage. 

11 Veering flaw. Shifting gusts of wind. 

14 Spanish Main. The northern coast of South America. 
55-6 Matthew vm, 23-26: " And when he was entered into a, 
ship, his disciples followed him, and behold, there arose a 
tempest in the sea. . . . and his disciples came to him and 
awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish. . . . Then 
he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there 
was a great calm." 

70 Carded wool. Wool that has been combed. 

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 

The " spreading chestnut tree " stood until 1876, when 
it was cut down in order to widen Brattle Street. The 
school-children of Cambridge gave Longfellow an arm- 
chair made from its wood. 

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR 

A skeleton in rude armor was dug up near Fall River, 
Massachusetts, some time before 1840 when this poem was 
written. Poe says of this poem that it shows "the beauty 
of bold courage and self-confidence, of love and maiden 
devotion, of reckless adventure, and finally of life-con- 
temning grief." 
17 Viking. The Vikings, or Northmen, people of the Scandi- 
navian vicks, or bays, plundered the coasts of England, 



HELPS IN READING 93 

LINE 

France, and neighboring lands in the eighth, ninth, and 
tenth centuries. 

19 Skald. Minstrel. 

20 Saga. A name applied to any ancient Norse legend. 

28 Gerfalcon. A large falcon, or bird of prey used in hunting, 

found in the Far North. 
38 Were-wolf. According to an old superstition certain evil 

persons were turned into wolves called "were-wolves." 
42 Corsair. A pirate. 
49 Wassail-bout. A drinking festival. 
53 Berserk. Certain fierce Scandinavian warriors of ancient 

times were called "Berserks." 
110 Skaw. A promontory. 
122 Cormorant. A gluttonous sea-bird. 

134 The lofty tower. Longfellow refers to the Round Tower at 
Newport, Rhode Island, the origin of which has never 
been explained satisfactorily. One theory names the 
Northmen as its builders. 
159 Skoal. Hail! A Scandinavian salutation used when drink- 
ing a health. 

SERENADE 

This beautiful song occurs in Act I, Scene 3, of The Span- 
ish Student, a comedy written by Longfellow in 1840. 

THE RAINY DAY 

The Rainy Day was written in Longfellow's old home in 
Portland, Maine, on a dreary day in 1841. 

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD 

The poet and his wife, on their wedding trip, visited the 
United States Arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts. 
Mrs. Longfellow suggested the resemblance between the 
rows of gleaming gun-barrels and the pipes of an organ, 
and said that Death would produce sad music from them. 
7 Miserere. Music appropriate for the 51st Psalm, or any 
lamentation. 

13 Saxon hammer. The war-hammer in various forms has 
been used by many races. 

14 Cimbric forest. The forests of northern and central Eu- 
rope, the home of the Cimbri, a people who fought against 
the Romans in the second century, b.c. 

16 Tartar gong. The war gong of the Tartars. 

17 Florentine. In the Middle Ages Florence was one of the 
leading Italian states. In the frequent contests of the 
time the "battle-bell " gave encouragement to those 
fighting. 

19 Teocallis. The temples of the Aztecs, the Mexican In- 
dians whom Cortes fought in the first half of the six- 
teenth century. 



94 HELPS IN READING 

LINE 

28 Diapason. The figure is most appropriate because the 
open diapason of an organ has large metal pipes that give a 
loud, majestic tone. 

40 Curse of Cain. Genesis iv, 11-15: "And now art thou 
cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to 
receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. . . . And the 
Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should 
kill him." 

CHILDREN 

Longfellow often expressed in poetry his deep love for 
children. That this was returned is well evidenced by the 
gift from the children of Cambridge. (See Note to The 
Village Blacksmith.) 

THE BELL OF ATRI 

The story is taken fron an old Italian tale in Gualte- 
ruzzi's Cento Novelle Antiche. 
1 Atri in Abruzzo. Atri, a small town in the old division of 
Abruzzo, Italy, is about one hundred miles to the north- 
east of Rome. 
7 Re Giovanni. King John. 

17 Syndic. The chief magistrate of the town. 

26 Briony. A tall climbing plant. 

32 Hoods. Hunters who used the bird of prey called a falcon 
kept the bird's head covered with a hood until the prey 
was in sight. 

66 Notice how the line imitates the sound of a great bell. 

73 Domeneddio. Lord! 

THE REPUBLIC 

These are the closing lines of The Building of the Ship. 
They were written in 1849, a critical time in the history of 
the United States. Their patriotic fervor has always made 
deep appeal to every lover of the Union. 

HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

A PSALM OF LIFE 

1. Outline the thought of the poem. 

2. What do the figures of speech add to the poem? 

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 

1. How strong is the character interest of the poem? 

2. How strong is the descriptive interest? 

3. What is the effect of the ballad style? 

4. What is the effect of the figures of speech? 

5. Why do we like the story? 



HELPS IN READING 95 



THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 

Which is most pleasing — the description in the first stanzas, 
the pathos in the sixth stanza, or the application in the 
final stanza? 

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR 

1. What does the poem tell us of Viking life? 

2. Poe thought the death of a beautiful woman the most 
appropriate subject for poetry. How does his opinion apply 
to this poem? To The Wreck of the Hesperus? To The 
Village Blacksmith f 

3. What is the effect of the rhyme-scheme? 

SERENADE 

1. What consonant sounds and what vowel sounds are most 
used in this poem? 

2. What repetitions are employed? 

THE RAINY DAY 

Poe thought that poems must be both beautiful and sad. 
In what way is this poem like or unlike Poe's poems? 

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD 

1. On what comparison is the poem founded? 

2. What is the effect of the allusions to history? 

3. What are the most poetic elements of the poem ? 

CHILDREN 

What makes the poem pleasing? 

THE BELL OF ATRI 

To what common interests does the poem appeal? 

THE REPUBLIC 



1. Explain the metaphors. 

2. What spirit pervades the poem? 



ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

Hymn to the Night; Footsteps of Angels; The Beleaguered 
City; The Day is Done; Sea Weed; The Old Clock on the 
Stairs; Evangeline; Sir Humphrey Gilbert; Tales of a Way- 
side Inn; Hiawatha; My Lost Youth; The Discoverer of 
the North Cape; The Courtship of Miles Standish; The 



96 HELPS IN READING 

Children's Hour; The Hanging of the Crane; The Revenge 
of Rain-in-the-Face; Keramos; The Children's Crusade; 
The Poets; The Descent of the Muses; Parker Cleaveland; 
Morituri Salutamus. 1 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 

NE 

In the battle of Buena Vista, fought February 22-23, 
1847, during the Mexican War, General Zachary Taylor, 
with 5000 United States soldiers, defeated Santa Anna 
with 15,000 Mexicans. After the battle a correspondent 
told of Mexican women who aided the wounded, and of 
one in particular who aided the soldiers of both armies. 
5 Angostura. Santa Anna, in his report, speaks of the battle 
as the battle of Angostura 

15 Minon. Don Jose V. Minon, a Mexican cavalry leader, 
commanded 1200 men in the battle. 

18 Puebla. The companies of Puebla and Tampico were 
commanded by Don Santiago Blanco. 

20 Fallow. Uncultivated land. 

MAUD MULLER 

The first suggestions for the poem came to Whittier dur- 
ing a journey in Maine with his sister. As they rested their 
horse under an apple tree beside a brook they talked with 
a young girl who had been at work in a near-by hayfield. 

93 Spinnet. An old-time stringed musical instrument some- 
thing like a small grand piano. 

94 Astral. A kind of oil lamp. 

95 Lug. The pole on which a kettle could be hung in the 
fireplace. 

THE BAREFOOT BOY 

The poem is autobiographical. 

12 Republican. Whittier means that a boy has so many ad- 
vantages that he is like a prince, while a grown man has 
no more advantages than other men have. 

63 Apples of Hesperides. Gaea, the earth, according to a 
Greek legend, caused golden apples to grow on a tree 
guarded by the maidens called Hesperides. The apples 
were taken by Hercules with the aid of the giant Atlas. 

78 Pied. Spotted. 

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 

The poem is founded on actual incidents in the siege of 
Lucknow, in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Tennyson has 

1 Most of these poems are contained in one or another of the following 
issues of the Riverside Literature Series: — Nos. 1, 2, 11, 38, 63, or N. 



HELPS IN READING 97 

LINE 

told the same story in his poem, The Relief of Luckncw. 
Lucknow, on the Goomtee River, a tributary of the Ganges, 
is the capital of Oudh, a densely populated region of India. 
5 Braes. Hills. 

13 Pibroch. Music of the Scotch Highlanders usually played 
on the bagpipes before battle. 

14 Loch. Lake. 

32 Havelock. Sir Henry Havelock, 1795-1857, a distin- 
guished British general who won great praise for his con- 
duct in the Indian Mutiny. 

36 Sepoy. Native soldiers employed in the service of the 
British. In 1857 these soldiers rebelled against the Brit- 
ish the immediate occasion of the rebellion being religious 
prejudice. 

46 Campbell. The Campbells and MacGregors are two im- 
portant Scotch clans, famous in history. Colin Campbell, 
1792-1863, was British Commander-in-Chief in Bengal 
in 1857. 

71 Tartan. In old times every Scotch clan was denoted by 
a woolen cloth-, or tartan, of a particular pattern, worn 
as part of the costume. 

MARGUERITE 

Marguerite is based on the same historic event as Evan- 
geline — the expulsion of the Acadians. Before Long- 
fellow had received the inspiration for Evangeline, Whittier 
had made studies concerning the Acadians. 
3 French neutral. An Acadian. 
8 The wheel with flaxen tangle. The spinning-wheel. 

14 Basin of Minas. An arm of the Bay of Fundy, Nova 
Scotia. Gaspereau is a small town not far from Grand Pre. 

38 Ephraim. Hosea iv, 17: "Ephraim is joined to idols: 
let him alone." 



IN SCHOOL DAYS 

The poem is autobiographical. " You have written," said 
Holmes to Whittier, " the most beautiful school-boy poem 
in the English language." A tablet now marks the site of 
the old schoolhouse. 



HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 

1. What points of view are taken in the poem? 

2. What pictures are suggested? 

3. What thoughts does the poem suggest? 

4. How is the poem made artistic? 



98 HELPS IN READING 



MAUD MULLER 

1. What pictures are suggested? 

2. What character interests does the poem have? 

3. What are the poetic elements in this poem? 

THE BAREFOOT BOY 

1. To what interests does the poem appeal? 

2. How is the simple thought made beautiful? 

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 

1. What is the plan of the poem? 

2. What gives the poem narrative power? 

3. To what senses does the poem appeal? 

4. What metrical devices are employed? 

MARGUERITE 

1. What pictures does the poem suggest? 

2. What contrasts are given? 

3. How does the poem fulfil some of Poe's ideas of poetic 
beauty? 

IN SCHOOL-DAYS 
What are the poetic elements in this poem? 



ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother; Massachusetts 
to Virginia; The Frost Spirit; Barclay of Ury; Ichabod; 
Burns; Skipper Ireson's Ride; Telling the Bees; The Swan 
Song of Parson Avery; My Playmate; Brown of Ossa- 
watomie ; Amy Wentworth ; Snow- Bound ; The Wreck of 
Rivermouth; The Eternal Goodness; Our Autocrat (Holmes) ; 
The Poet and the Children (Longfellow); Bryant on his 
Birthday; O.W. Holmes on his Eightieth Birthday; James 
Russell Lowell; To William Lloyd Garrison. 1 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



TO HELEN 

Helen. In an undated letter to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whit- 
man, Poe says he wrote this poem to Helen Stannard, a 
woman for whom he had a high regard and who died when 
he was fifteen years old. 

1 Most of these poems are contained in one or another of the follow- 
ing issues of the Riverside Literature Series: — Nos. 4, 5, 41, 175, or T. 



HELPS IN READING 99 

LINE 

2 Nicean barks. This allusion may refer to the Greek Empire 

of Nicaea. Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land may 

have been assisted by Nicsean boatmen. 
8 Naiad. According to classical mythology the naiads were 

the beautiful and graceful guardians of springs and streams. 
14 Psyche. The Greek and Roman personification of the soul, 

always represented as a beautiful girl with the wings of 

a butterfly. 

ISRAFEL 

Israfel. The angel of music, according to the Koran. 

12 Levin. Lightning. 

13 Pleiads. A group of six small stars. 

26 Houri. The Koran speaks of the Houris as the beautiful 
nymphs of Paradise. 

THE CITY IN THE SEA 

18 Babylon-like. The ancient city of Babylon was noted for 
its great walls. 

30 Fanes. Temples. 

TO ONE IN PARADISE 

One. The poem was written in 1834 and may refer to Mrs. 
Stannard. See note to the poem To Helen. 

THE RAVEN 
10 Surcease. End. 

41 Pallas. The Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and the arts. 
47 Plutonian. Pluto was the Roman god of the lower world. 
80 Seraphim. Angels of the highest rank. 
83 Nepenthe. An ancient drug used to give relief from pain 

and sorrow. 
89 Balm in Gilead. A healing balsam found in Syria. See 

Jeremiah, viii, 22. 
93 Aidenn* Eden. 

ULALUME 

Ulalume was written in 1847, some months after the death 
of Virginia Clemm, Poe's wife. 

8 Tarn. A pool among the hills. 

9 Ghoul-haunted. Ghouls, according to Eastern supersti- 
tion, are evil beings who eat human bodies. 

10 Titanic. Gigantic. The Titans were gigantic deities against 
whom Zeus fought. 

14 Scoriae. Lava. 

16 Yaanek. A name invented by Poe. 

19 Boreal Pole. The North Pole. 

37 Astarte. A Syrian goddess of love whose emblem was the 
moon. 



100 HELPS IN READING 

LINE 

39 Dian. The Roman goddess of the moon. 

44 Stars of the Lion. The group of stars called "Leo," the 

lion. 
46 Lethean. Forgetful. Those who drank the waters of 

Lethe, a river in Hades, forgot all their past. 
64 Sibyllic. Prophetic. The sibyls were women with prophetic 

powers. 

THE BELLS 

10 Runic. Mysterious. The ancient Scandinavians used 
letters called "runes." The} r were early associated with 
mystery and magic. 

ANNABEL LEE 

The poem, written in 1849, commemorates the death of 
Poe's wife. 

ELDORADO 

Eldorado. Originally the "golden land" for which the 
early Spanish explorers in South America sought; hence, 
any land of exhaustless wealth; or an illusory quest. 



HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

TO HELEN 

1 . Does the poet praise ' ' Helen ' ' for anything besides beauty? 

2. What words add suggestive value to the poem? 

ISRAFEL 

1. What is the secret of Israfel's power? 

2. What is the thought of the poem? 

3. What metrical effects add to the value of the poem? 

THE CITY IN THE SEA 

1. What pictures does the poem suggest? 

2. What is the general effect of the poem? 

3. What expressions are especially poetic? 

TO ONE IN PARADISE 

1. To what is the pleasing quality of the poem due? 

2. What is the value of the last two lines? 

3. What figures of speech add suggestive values? 

THE RAVEN 

1. What is the mood of the poem? 

2. What story does the poem tell? 



HELPS IN READING 101 

3. What is the thought of the poem? 

4. Which lines are most pleasing? 

5. What word-effects are most noticeable? 

ULALUME 

1. What pictures does the poem suggest? 

2. Which lines are most pleasing? 

3. To what effects is the charm of the poem due.' 

THE BELLS 

1. What is the purpose of the poem? 

2. What is the plan of the poem? . 

3 What word-effects help to carry out the mam design f 
4! Point out the lines in which thought-values and nnitative- 

sound- values most closely correspond. 

What metrical effects are most important? 



5 



ANNABEL LEE 



1. What effects make the poem musical? 

2. To what is the fascination of the poem due? 

ELDORADO 

1. What is the meaning of the poem? 

2. What metrical effects make the poem beautiful? 

ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

Bridal Ballad; The Sleeper; Lenore; To Zante; The 
Coliseum; The Haunted Palace; The Conqueror Worm; 

Eulalic; To F ; To Helen (II); For Annie; A Dream 

Within a Dream; Alone; The Valley of Unrest. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
TO THE DANDELION 

5 Buccaneers. Seventeenth-century pirates and adventur- 
ers in the West Indies and along the coasts bordering the 
Caribbean Sea. 

6 Eldorado. See note on Poe's poem "Eldorado above 

10 Spanish prow. The Spaniards, seeking gold, were the first 
to explore the lands around the Caribbean Sea. 

14 Largess. Gift. , . . . , 

23. Golden-cuirassed. With the body covered with golden 
armor. . 

26 Sybaris. An ancient city in southern Italy famous ior 
wealth and luxury. 



102 HELPS IN READING 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 



LINE 






The immediate occasion of the poem was the proposed 
annexation of Texas. 

44 Delphic cave. The cave of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi 
in ancient Greece. 

46 Cyclops. Terrible one-eyed giants mentioned by Homer. 

62 Calvaries. Luke xxm, 33 : " And when they were come to 
the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified 
him." 

64 Credo. Creed. "Credo" (I believe) is the opening word 
of the Apostle's Creed in Latin. 

67 Judas. Matthew xxvn, 3: " Then Judas, which had be- 
trayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented 
himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to 
the chief priests and elders." 

74 Mayflower. The founders of Plymouth Colony sailed 
from Southampton on the Mayflower, a vessel of only 
180 tons, landing at Plymouth Rock December 22, 1620. 

76 Iconoclasts. Originally, those who opposed the use of 
images in church services. Literally image-breakers; hence, 
radicals; those who attack cherished beliefs as shams. 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

4 A bridge from Dreamland. The sound of the first uncer- 
tain organ notes suggests coherent thought — builds a 
bridge from the world of dreams to the world of reality. 

7 Auroral flushes. As a rose-colored eastern sky precedes 
sunrise, so the poet's first hesitating thought precedes his 
full theme. 
12 Sinais. Exodus xix tells how God gave Moses the ten 
commandments on Mount Sinai. The poet means that 
we may see God, if we will, in our daily lives. 

17 Druid. The Druids were priests of the ancient Celts. The 
forest, like a venerable priest, offers us its blessing. 

18 Benedicite. Blessing. 

23 Shrives. Hears confession and gives absolution. 

46 Chalice. Cup. 

77 Chanticleer. The cock. 

99 Holy Grail. " According to the mythology of the Romancers, 
the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus 
partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It was brought 
into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, 
an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in 
• the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent 
upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, 
word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this 
condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it 
was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court 
to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in 



HELPS IN READING 103 

LINE 

finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the 
Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Gala- 
had the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems. 
" The plot (if I may give that name to anything so 
slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its 
purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in 
search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to in- 
clude, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round 
Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the sup- 
posed date of King Arthur's reign." (Lowell.) 

103 Rushes. In old times the floors of castles were strewn 
with rushes. 

176 Wold. An open, or treeless section of country. 

184 Groined. One " groins " an arch by making a series of 
intersections with other arches, producing a ribbed vault. 

190 Forest-crypt. A crypt is an underground vault. Here the 
poet supposes the brook to flow through a place like the 
crypt of a church. 

196 Arabesques. An arabesque design is a fantastic design 
made up of flowers, vines, fruits and even figures of men 
and animals, a kind of design suggested by Arabic art. 

213 Corbel. A bracket projecting from a wall as a support for 
a beam. 

216 Yule-log. A great log used as the back-log at Christmas. 

233 Seneschal. An officer in charge of domestic ceremonies. 

255 Surcoat. A long garment worn over a knight's armor. 

307 The Beautiful Gate. Acts m, 2: " At the gate of the 
temple which is called Beautiful." 

308 Himself the Gate. John x, 9: " I am the door." 

322 The Holy Supper. The communion service in commemor- 
ation of the last supper of Jesus and his disciples. 

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 

This beautiful poem was written in 1849 in memory of 
Lowell's first child, Blanche, who died in March, 1847, at 
the age of fifteen months. 
9 Carrara. Marble from Carrara, Italy. 

17 Auburn. Mount Auburn Cemetery,' Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts. 

21 Mabel. Lowell's second daughter. 

THE COURTIN' 

17 Crook-necks. Crook-neck squashes. 

19 Queen' s-arm. An old musket used in the battle of 
Concord. 

20 Concord. See the note on Emerson's Concord Hymn. 

43 Ole Hunderd. A psalm tune formerly used with the one 
hundredth psalm and now generally used in the doxology, 
" Praise God from whom all blessings flow." 

94 Bay o' Fundy. The Bay of Fundy, an inlet of the Atlantic 



104 HELPS IN READING 

LINE 

Ocean between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, is noted 
for its tides, which reach a height of sixty to seventy feet. 
95 Cried. Their approaching marriage was officially an- 
nounced. 



HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

TO THE DANDELION 

1. What comparisons does the poet make? 

2. What suggestions does the dandelion bring to the poet? 

THE PRESENT CRISIS 

1. What is the thought of the poem? 

2. Explain: " For mankind are one in spirit," line 16. 

3. Explain lines 38-40. 

4. Name examples for lines 56-57. 

5. Explain line 86. 

6. What reasons lead you to think the meter of the poem well 
chosen? 

7. What is the effect of the figurative language? 

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

1. What is the thought of the poem? 

2. What is the plan of the poem? 

3. What is the purpose of the preludes? 

4. What parts of the poem are most poetic? 

5. Which descriptions are most pleasing? 

6. Explain lines 324-25. 

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 

What is the effect of the poem? 

THE COURTIN' 

What effects produce the humor of the poem? 

ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

My Love; The Shepherd of King Admetus; An Incident in 
a Railroad, Car: Rhcecus: Columbus; An Indian-Summer 
Reverie; The Biglow Papers; A Fable for Critics; Beaver 
Brook: Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration; Alad- 
din; To Holmes: To H. W. L.; Wendell Phillips; To 
Whittier: At the Burns Centennial. 1 

1 Most of these poems are contained in one or another of the follow- 
ing issues of the Riverside Literature Series : — Nos. 30, M, O, or Z. 



HELPS IN READING 105 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
THANATOPSIS 

LINE 

Thanatopsis. A vision of death. A combination of two 
Greek words, ddvaros, death, and fyt.s, a vision. 

11 Pall. A black cloth placed over a coffin. 

12 Narrow house. The grave. 

29 Share. Plowshare. 

51 The Barcan wilderness. A desert region in the north of 

Africa. 
53 The Oregon. The Columbia River. 

INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD 

11 The primal curse. God's punishment of Adam. Genesis 
in, 17-19: " Cursed is the ground for thy sake." 

30 Causey. A causeway or raised path. 

HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

THANATOPSIS 

1. What is the main thought of Thanatopsis f 

2. How can one hold communion with the visible forms of 
Nature? 

3. What does Bryant mean when he says Nature " speaks a 
various language "? 

4. What thoughts help Bryant to regard death without fear? 

5. What is Bryant's "unfaltering trust" ? 

6. How does the rhythm of the poem add to its thought? 

7. What expressions are especially beautiful or suggestive? 

INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD 

1. How is the thought in this poem related to passages in 
Thanatopsis ? 

2. What pictures does the poem suggest? 

3. To what senses does the poem appeal? 

TO A WATERFOWL 

1. What picture is the foundation of the poem? 

2. What is the thought of the poem? 



ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

The Yellow Violet; Green River; A Walk at Sunset; A 
Forest Hymn; Monument Mountain; The Death of the 
Flowers; Hymn to the City; The Song of Marion's Men; 



106 HELPS IN READING 

To the Fringed Gentian; The Planting of the Apple-Tree; 
Robert of Lincoln; Sella; The Little People of the Snow; 
The Flood of Years. 1 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
THE RHODORA 

lilNE 

2 Rhodora. The rhodora is a low shrub found in cool, wet, 
wooded places in New England and elsewhere. Its pur- 
plish-rose colored flowers appear before the leaves. 

CONCORD HYMN 

The battle of Concord (Massachusetts) was fought April 
19, 1775, between about 500 American Minute-Men and 
800 British. The monument to which Emerson refers 
marks the place where the first British soldiers fell. 

FORBEARANCE 
3 Pulse. Simple food, — peas, beans, and the like. 



HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

THE RHODORA 

1. Describe the place in which the rhodora was found. 

2. What is the meaning of the poem? 

CONCORD HYMN 
In what way was the shot "heard round the world "? 

FABLE 

1. What thought does the poem express? 

2. What is the advantage of using the form of a fable? 

FORBEARANCE 

1. What is the poet's attitude toward nature? toward man? 

2. What makes the poem artistic? 

MUSIC 

1. What is the " sky-born music " ? 

2. What can you say to prove the truth of the poem? 

» Most of these poems are contained in No. 54 of the Riverside 
Literature Series. 



HELPS IN READING 107 



ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

Each and All; The Problem; To J. W.; Good-Bye ; The 
Humble-Bee; The Snow-Storm ; The Apology; Threnody; 
Brahma; The River; Thine Eyes Still Shincd; Written in 
Naples. 1 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

OLD IRONSIDES 

:ne 

The American frigate Constitution was launched at 
Boston in 1797, and was first used against the Mediterra- 
nean pirates. In the War of 1812 the vessel made a remark- 
able record, fighting the British Guerriere, August 19, the 
British frigate Java, December 29, and the Cyane and 
Levant, February 20, 1815. In 1830, the vessel being old 
and unseaworthy, the Secretary of the Navy proposed to 
dismantle it. Holmes, then a young man of twenty-one, 
having read of this in a newspaper, wrote Old Ironsides. 
The writing of the poem aroused public sentiment which 
saved the vessel. She was rebuilt and kept in commis- 
sion until 1881. After use as school ship and receiving 
ship, the Constitution was taken to Boston where it is 
still open to public inspection. 

15 Harpies. Winged monsters with the faces and bodies of 
women and the wings and claws of birds of prey. 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

"The chambered nautilus " is a kind of mollusk said to 
sail by means of expanded tentacles. Its shell is pearly 
and iridescent. It makes a series of enlarging compart- 
ments built in a spiral. 
5 Siren. The sirens, according to Homer, are sea nymphs 
who, by their singing, attract sailors in order to destroy 
them. 

14 Crypt. An underground vault. 

26 Triton. A sea god, usually represented as blowing a shell 
trumpet. 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE 

1 Shay. A chaise, or pleasure carriage, drawn by one horse 

and designed for two people. 
10 Georgius Secundus. George II, King of England, born in 

Hanover, Germany, 1683, died in London, 1760. 
12 Lisbon-town. Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was nearly 

destroyed by an earthquake on November 1, 1755. 

1 Most of these poems are contained in No. 113 of the Riverside 
Literature Series. 



108 HELPS IN READING 

LINE 

14 Braddock. Edward Braddock, 1695-1755, a British gen- 
eral, defeated July 9, 1755, by the French and Indians 
during an expedition against Fort Duquesne, now the city 
of Pittsburg. 

20 Felloe — thill. Felly, the wooden rim of a wheel. Thill, one 
of the shafts between which a horse is hitched. 

22 Thoroughbrace. A strong leather strap that aids in sup- 
porting the body of a carriage. 

45 Ellum. Elm. 

51 Linchpin. A pin that keeps a wagon wheel on the axletree. 

90 Whipple-tree. The pivoted bar to which the tugs are 
fastened. 

92 Encore. Once more. 

99 Ewe-necked. A horse whose neck lacks the proper arch 
is said to be ewe-necked — to have a neck like a sheep. 



HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

OLD IRONSIDES 

1. What is the spirit of the poem? 

2. To what sentiments does it appeal? 

3. What is the effect of the figurative language? 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

1. Comment on the use of adjectives in this poem. 

2. What is the effect of the figures of speech? 

3. What does the poem mean? 

i 
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE 

What are the humorous elements of the poem? 

ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

The Ballad of the Oysterman; The Height of the Ridiculous; 
My Aunt; The Last Leaf; On Lending a Punch Bowl; Par- 
son TurrelVs Legacy; The Boys; A Sun-Day Hymn; Bill 
and Joe; Dorothy Q.; Grandmother's Story of Bunker- Hill 
Battle; How the Old Horse won the Bet; For Whittier's 
Seventieth Birthday; To James Russell Lowell (three poems) ; 
The Broomstick Train; Bryant's Seventieth Birthday; To 
H. W. Longfellow; Farewell to J. R. Lowell; To John 
Greenleaf Whittier; In Memory of John Greenleaf Whiltier; 
At the Atlantic Dinner; For the Burns Centennial Celebra- 
tion. 1 

1 Most of these poems are contained in No. 6 of the Riverside 
Literature Series. 






HELPS IN READING 109 

WALT WHITMAN 
CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD 

LINE 

7 Guidon flags. Small pointed flags carried by non-com- 
missioned cavalry officers to guide the march or formation. 

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

No other poem written in memory of Lincoln expresses 
deeper, more passionate feeling. 
2 Rack. Storm. 



HELPFUL QUESTIONS 

CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD 

1. What unusual power does the poem show? 

2. What is the form of the poem? 

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

1. Comment on the appropriateness of the figure on which 
the poem is based. 

2. What contrast adds to the effect? 

3. What metrical effects are most pleasing? 

HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY 

How does the poem differ from most poems by other 
authors? 

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER 

1. What does the poem mean? 

2. Is the form of the poem pleasing? 

THE FIRST DANDELION 
Compare this poem with Lowell's To the Dandelion. 



ADDITIONAL POEMS FOR READING 

There was a Child Went Forth; Song of the Open Road; 
Assurances; Crossing Brooklyn Ferry; I Hear America 
Singing; Fidl of Life Now; Night on the Prairies; Mag- 
net Soidh; Mannahatta; Bivouac on a Mountain Side; The 
Wound Dresser; Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun; When 
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed; Darest Thou Now, 
Soul. 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

These notes are intended to be suggestive rather than 
definitive. In general their plan is (1) to give only the most 
important dates; (2) to present such facts with respect to the 
poet's ancestry, early surroundings, taste, and education as 
will, if studied with a little thought, illuminate the man's 
life and works; (3) to show how he came in contact with 
other literary men of his time and how he was molded by 
their influence; (4) to mention his attitude toward public 
questions of his day and to show what part he bore in public 
service. Full biographical notes are given for those poets 
to whom, according to the College Entrance Requirements, 
"special attention" is to be given. 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

In Portland, Maine, — the " beautiful town that is seated 
by the sea," as he called it in his poem, My Lost Youth, — 
Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807. His father, a 
graduate of Harvard, was a prominent lawyer in Portland, a 
former Member of Congress, and a trustee of Bowdoin Col- 
lege. His mother, like the mother of Bryant, was a descend- 
ant of that romantic Puritan couple, John Alden and Pris- 
cilla Mullens, whose interesting story Longfellow told in 
The Courtship of Miles Standish. 

In his father's great collection of books Longfellow found 
much that gave him delight. He read Irving's Sketch-Book 
with unbounded interest, dreaming himself into the great 
author's indolent charm and kindly view of life, so that when 
in later years he wrote Outre-Mer he unconsciously repro- 
duced something of the spirit of Irving. In poetry he was 
drawn to the work of Bryant, feeling the power of its solemn 
music and reproducing something of its tone in the boyish 
poems he wrote before he entered college. 

At Bowdoin, which he entered as a sophomore, he was a 
classmate of Hawthorne, with whom, however, he never 
became really intimate. While in college his love for books 
increased so that he wrote home: " I most eagerly aspire after 
further eminence in literature." Upon his graduation he was 
offered the newly established professorship of Modern Lan- 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ill 

guages at Bowdoin, with the privilege of spending three 
years in Europe in preparation for the work. After much 
travel and hard study in Europe he returned to his Alma 
Mater, where he taught for five years. 

In 1835 the brilliant young professor was called to Harvard 
to the professorship of Belles-Lettres. After eighteen months 
of further travel and study in Europe he took up his work at 
Harvard, where he remained until 1854, finally resigning in 
order to devote his entire time and strength to literary work. 

Longfellow, essentially a student, was never deeply moved 
by the public questions of the day. He did not become a 
Transcendentalist as did Emerson, nor did he take active 
part with Whittier and Lowell in fervent writing against the 
institution of slavery. In fact, the little that he wrote on that 
subject is in striking contrast with the impassioned verses of 
Whittier. 

In 1868, on another visit to Europe, he was received by 
Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, and was given honorary 
degrees by the great English universities at Oxford and 
Cambridge. In his own land his poetry had made him loved 
by all, and by none more than by the children. On his 
seventy-second birthday the children of Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts, the home of his later life, came to the Craigie 
House, where they presented him a chair made from the very 
wood of the "spreading chestnut tree" of The Village 
Blacksmith. His seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated in the 
schools throughout the United States. 

The charm of his literary work and the radiance of his 
kindly spirit gave him the admiration and the love of all who 
knew him. Thus, full of years and honors, he passed away on 
March 24, 1882. Two years later a marble bust of the great 
American poet was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westmin- 
ster Abbey, this being the first time an American writer was 
so honored. 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

In a pleasant old farmhouse not far from the thriving 
community of Haverhill, Massachusetts, John Greenleaf 
Whittier was born on December 17, 1807, the year that saw 
the birth of Longfellow. In that same farmhouse, erected 
in 1688, the Whittier family had lived generation after gen- 



112 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

eration for nearly a century and a quarter. The poet's father 
was a simple farmer whose ancestors had been sturdy, honest 
people. Through his mother the poet was related to Daniel 
Webster. 

Unlike Longfellow, Whittier was not born into a home filled 
with books. Nevertheless, he read the books that were at 
hand and made them a part of his life. There was the Bible, 
with its beautiful rhythms and its high spiritual values, — a 
book that he learned from cover to cover. His people for 
three generations had been Quakers, and so he had access to 
numerous sermons, journals, and biographies of famous 
members of the Society of Friends. To this reading he made 
definite reference in Snow-Bound. Then there was a volume 
of Burns, loaned to him by a school teacher, that thrilled him 
with its revelation of the poetry that lies hidden in things 
that are common and familiar. Because Whittier also re- 
vealed the beauty of the commonplace, he has been likened to 
Burns. Various borrowed books went into the making of 
Whittier's life — Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare's plays, 
Gray's Elegy, Cowper's Lament for the Royal George, and one 
at least of Scott's spirited novels. From such home reading 
and from a few terms in a district school Whittier gained 
his early education. 

Whittier was a mere boy when he first began to write verse. 
Once, unknown to him, his sister sent one of his poems to 
William Lloyd Garrison's Newburyport Free Press. This 
poem, printed in 1826, was Whittier's first poem to appear in 
print. Garrison, only twenty years of age at the time, be- 
came interested in the author and urged the father to give 
the young poet further school education. Although the 
father objected, saying, "Sir, poetry will not give him 
bread," he relented a little later and allowed his son to enter 
the new Haverhill Academy on condition that he pay his 
own way. By means of shoemaking by hand, at that time a 
common industry, and by teaching in a district school, Whit- 
tier supported himself for two terms. His family was too 
poor to afford him the advantage of college training. 

From 1829 to 1836 Whittier did editorial work in Boston, 
Haverhill, and Hartford, often leaving his literary labors to 
help in the farmwork for which his father's death had left 
him largely responsible. He had long sympathized with the 
work of the abolitionists, and in 1833 he definitely allied him- 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 113 

self with their cause, this being the great turning-point in 
his life. In this matter his guiding influence was the self- 
sacrificing work of William Lloyd Garrison. For the next 
twenty-seven years he wrote such vigorous prose and verse 
in favor of abolition that he was several times assaulted 
by angry mobs that opposed his views. In 1835 he was hon- 
ored by an election to the Legislature of Massachusetts. 

From 1836 to 1865 Whittier published various collections 
of his poetry, and some prose. His masterpiece, Snow-Bound, 
a New England idyll, appeared in 1866, its homely simplicity 
entitling it to a place beside Burns's The Cotter's Saturday 
Night and Goldsmith's The Deserted Village. The poem had 
such immediate popularity that he soon gained $10,000. 
During the remainder of his long life Whittier published 
many collections of poetry, the last appearing when he 
was eighty-five years old. His fame increased with his age, 
so that in his later years his birthday, like that of Long- 
fellow, was honored by public celebration. Having had the 
good fortune to see his most deeply cherished dreams real- 
ized, he died on the early morning of September 7, 1892. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

The glamor of romance hangs about the life of Poe, which 
harmonizes strangely with all that he wrote. His father, of 
Southern descent, had become an actor and had married an 
actress. On January 19, 1809, while their company was play- 
ing in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe was born. It was from his 
mother, we may believe, that Poe inherited his artistic abil- 
ity; while from his father came the prevailing weaknesses 
that so thoroughly wrecked his career. Both parents died 
when he was little more than a baby. Edgar was adopted by 
Mr. John Allan, a rich tobacco merchant of Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, who gave him every luxury, and for five years sent him 
to school in England. After further study in Richmond, Poe, 
at the age of seventeen, entered the University of Virginia. 
He was a good student, but he gambled and drank to excess. 
After a year he left the university and entered Mr. Allan's 
office. Soon tiring of that, he ran away from home and 
entered the United States Army under the name of Edgar A. 
Perry. At the end of two years Mr. Allan purchased his 
release from the ranks, and later procured for him an ap- 



114 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

pointment to West Point. After a time, however, Poe 
became purposely disobedient in order to gain his dismissal 
from the Academy. This led to a final breach with Mr. 
Allan. 

Poe then definitely took up literature as a profession, wrote 
a number of brilliant tales, became editor of one publication 
after another, and lived at various times in Baltimore, Rich- 
mond, Philadelphia, and New York. In 1835 he married his 
cousin, Virginia Clemm, then only fourteen years old. For a 
time Poe seems to have made a successful effort to recover 
his self-control, this being the period of his best work. But 
shortly his habits of intemperance were renewed, leading him 
into quarrels and neglect of work, so that he lost many posi- 
tions. The publication of The Raven in 1845 gave him wide- 
spread fame in this country and in Europe. The death of his 
wife in 1847 preceded his own death by two years, his last 
days being extremely sad. 

An estimate of Poe's work as a poet is given on page 119, 
but we may here mention his writing in other fields of 
thought. 

He was the first American literary critic. Not always cor- 
rect and not always fair, he still had remarkable critical in- 
sight. He was among the first to recognize the value of the 
poetry of Mrs. Browning, whose influence on his own work, 
by the way, is worthy of note. He recognized the charm in 
Tennyson's early work, admired Dickens from the beginning, 
and set Hawthorne before the world as a writer of a new type 
of fiction, the short story with a single effect. He gave accu- 
rate judgments of the poetry of Lowell, Longfellow, and 
Bryant as well as of the prose works of Irving and Cooper. 

His work as a writer of short stories is very important. He 
is practically the originator of the modern short story, for 
whose construction he gave definite principles. In his liter- 
ary work he has something of the fancy of Hawthorne, some- 
thing of the realism of Defoe. His scientific stories led the 
way to those of Jules Verne and of the writers of to-day. His 
stories of deductive reasoning have been models for Sherlock 
Holmes, and for all our modern detective stories. It is pos- 
sible that his William Wilson gave Stevenson the suggestion 
for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 115 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

The ancestors of Lowell for three generations had been 
educated at Harvard College and had taken active and noble 
part in public life. His grandfather, in 1780, had led in the 
abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. The Lowell Institute 
in Boston, and the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, are pres- 
ent-day memorials of the work and influence of various 
branches of his family. 

Lowell was born in the university town of Cambridge, 
February 22, 1819, some three months before the birth of 
Whitman. His father was a Boston clergyman, whose library 
of 3000 to 4000 books gave the poet the best reading that 
could be obtained. His mother's love of poetry gave him an 
inherited taste for all that is best in literature. Few poets 
have been born to more favorable circumstances. 

The first great piece of literature to impress him was 
Spenser's Faerie Queen, while Scott's romantic novels made 
early appeal. Lowell has written that after he entered Har- 
vard in 1834 he "read almost everything except the text- 
books prescribed by the faculty"; for example, Dodsley's 
collection of Old Plays, Montaigne's Essays, Hakluyt's Voy- 
ages, Southey's Doctor, the works of Carlyle, and the poems 
of Dante, Milton, Cowper, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats. It 
is undoubtedly true that Lowell's wide reading gave him an 
education that he could never have gained from the some- 
what restricted curriculum of the college course of his time; 
but however that may be, his reading so seriously interfered 
with his studies that he was suspended for a short time just 
before his graduation in 1838 and "rusticated" in Concord 
with a tutor. There he became acquainted with Emerson, 
who, in 1837, had made a deep impression upon him and 
other Harvard students by his brilliant Phi Beta Kappa 
address on The American Scholar. Lowell had been editor of 
a college publication and had written a few poems, so that his 
election to the position of class poet is not surprising, al- 
though it displeased his father, who exclaimed: "Oh, dear ! 
James promised me that he would quit writing poetry and go 
to work! " 

Immediately after graduation Lowell took up the study of 
law and was admitted to the bar in 1840. With no natural 



116 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

liking for legal work, he devoted himself more to the writing 
of poems and sketches than to the sober work of the law. His 
literary work was so good that it had a ready sale, so critical 
an editor as Edgar Allan Poe being one of the editors who 
accepted his contributions. Lowell finally abandoned the 
law in order to give himself entirely to literature. He estab- 
lished a monthly magazine in which he printed excellent 
work from Poe, Hawthorne, and Miss Barrett (later Mrs. 
Browning). The magazine lived only three months, after 
which Lowell became a member of the editorial staff of the 
Pennsylvania Freeman, a paper at one time edited by Whit- 
tier. Little by little he gained interest in abolition until, in 
1845, he held a foremost place with Whittier in supporting 
the cause of freedom for the slaves. 

In the next ten years he wrote a remarkable variety of 
work, including the satirical Biglow Papers, the humorous 
Fable for Critics, and the widely popular and beautiful Vision 
of Sir Launfal, his best work. His Lowell Institute lectures 
on the English poets, in 1854-55, brought him the appoint- 
ment as Longfellow's successor at Harvard as Professor of 
Modern Languages. When the Atlantic Monthly was founded 
in 1857, Lowell became its first editor, a position that 
brought him into contact with many literary men, including 
especially Oliver Wendell Holmes. Lowell acted as editor of 
the Atlantic Monthly four years; then, after an interval of 
three years, he took up work with the North American Re- 
view, the publication that had printed Bryant's noble 
Thanatopsis 

Lowell's work having brought him into national import- 
ance, President Hayes, in 1877, appointed him Minister to 
Spain, an office once held by Washington Irving. In 1880 he 
was sent as United States Minister to England, where his 
pleasing personality, his broad-minded patriotism, and his 
unusual ability as a public speaker won him a place in the 
hearts of all. While acting in his official capacity he took 
part in the unveiling of Longfellow's bust in Westminster 
Abbey. In 1885 he returned to America, where he remained 
lecturing and writing, with the exception of several summers 
in England, until his death on August 12, 1S91. 



AN ESTIMATE OF THE POETRY OF 

LONGFELLOW, WHITTIER, POE, 

AND LOWELL 1 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

The qualities which especially mark the poetry of Long- 
fellow are simplicity of style, beautiful imagery, moral earn- 
estness, and narrative power. 

So simple is this poet that many critics pronounce him 
commonplace. Unquestionably he possessed what may be 
termed the common mind. He was not a profound thinker, 
not one of "the bards sublime" ; he spoke out of the common 
experience of life, and it was this in large degree which gave 
him the comprehension and affection of the common people. 

We must remember, also, that when we dwell upon the 
commonplaceness or the triteness of Longfellow's sentiment, 
we are often emphasizing the fact that the verse of our criti- 
cism has become worn by our own use. 

Longfellow shared generously in the gift bestowed on all 
poets, the sense of beauty and the power of figurative expres- 
sion. Not at all like the magical art of Poe, Longfellow's art, 
impassionate, quiet, restrained, often pensive, sometimes 
melancholy, — never morbid, — is equally distinctive and 
equally true. He too had a rare felicity of phrase which gave 
artistic setting to his figures. 

Like Bryant, Longfellow is usually impressed by the "les- 
son" in the thing he sees, and often tags his poem with a 
moral that is obvious enough to be left unformulated. Yet 
the happy expression of these wise observations is far from 
unattractive to the average American reader; and through 
them he won his way to the hearts of many. 

It is as a writer of narrative poems that Longfellow attains 
his chief distinction. No other American poet compares with 
him in this field. Not only the three long poems which deal 
with themes of national interest (Evangeline, The Court- 
ship of Miles Standish, and The Song of Hiawatha), but also 

i Excerpts from A Student's History of American Literature, by William 
Edward Simonds, Ph.D., Professor of English Literature in Knox College. 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers. 



118 AN ESTIMATE 

the twenty-two tales of The Wayside Inn series and his numer- 
ous ballads must be taken into account. 

As a lyric poet, Longfellow ranks with the best. Many of 
his poems are songs. With the sonnet, too, he was eminently 
successful. 

Longfellow's intimate acquaintance with the literatures of 
Europe and the influence of professional study are shown in 
the large number of facile translations from Scandinavian, 
German, French, Italian, and Spanish poets. They are 
marked by insight, sympathy, and felicity of interpretation; 
and form no unimportant portion of his work. 

The poetry of Poe found great favor among the Latin 
peoples of Europe; Longfellow's poems have enjoyed as wide 
if not wider popularity abroad. There is an anecdote which 
gives a remarkable illustration of this fact. It is said that 
on a French steamer sailing from Constantinople to Mar- 
seilles, a Russian, an Englishman, a Scotchman, a French- 
man, a Greek, and an American vied with one another in 
quotations from our poet. In America, certainly, Long- 
fellow is still the poet of the people. 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

In comparison with our other American poets, Whittier 
must be recognized as essentially provincial. Aside from the 
fact that a large body of his verse, the anti-slavery poems, 
was necessarily of temporary value, we must remember also 
that the best portion of his work belongs wholly to New 
England, It is nevertheless true that, while this circum- 
stance places a limitation upon its scope, it does not detract 
from the strength and value of his poetry. While the poet 
has never received, like Longfellow and Poe, the recognition 
of other peoples than our own, this restriction of his field, 
with the fidelity and vividness of his interpretation, is pre- 
cisely what gives to Whittier his chief distinction here at 
home. Nor was he in the larger sense a great poet. No one 
recognized the technical faults of his verse more frankly than 
Whittier himself. "I should be hung for my bad rhymes any- 
where south of Mason and Dixon's line," he wrote to his 
publisher. That he did not hold a place with the men of pro- 
found insight, the " seers," he knew equally well. His own 
modest estimate of his poetic gifts he has expressed in stanzas 



AN ESTIMATE 119 

of unusual beauty, which to some extent are themselves a 
contradiction of the statement : — 

"The rigor of a frozen clime, 
The harshness of an untaught ear, 

The jarring words of one whose rhyme, 

Beat often Labor's hurried time, 
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. 

"Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, 
No rounded art the lack supplies; 

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 

Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
I view her common form with unanointed eyes. 

"Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
The secrets of the heart and mind; 

To drop the plummet-line below 

Our common world of joy and woe, 
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find." 



The fine artistic taste of Longfellow, Whittier lacked, as 
he lacked the culture of broad reading and of travel ; but he 
possessed the genuine love of nature and humanity; he had 
the virility of a strong character, free from all artificiality, 
the ardor of the truest patriotism, and, at the outset of his 
career, the inestimable advantage of consecration to an up- 
lifting cause. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

The best of Poe's compositions are exquisite embodiments 
of his own theories regarding his art. Poetry and music were 
allied in his mind, the aim in both to produce an impression. 
The poetical effect, he said, could be prolonged only to a 
certain limit; and that he placed at about one hundred lines. 
He had no sympathy with the idea that poetry should incul- 
cate a moral; this idea he termed "the heresy of the Didac- 
tic," and soundly rated the New England poets for their 
inclination so to write. Poetry he defined as "the rhythmical 
creation of beauty." The poetic principle manifests itself "in 
an elevating excitement of the soul." In the service of 
beauty, Poe employed his art. 

Poe's melodies are haunting ones. Sonorous words play 
an important part in the mechanics of his composition. 



120 AN ESTIMATE 

Repetition, sometimes in the form of assonance, as in the 
line, — 

"From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime"; x 

sometimes in the refrain, so effectively employed in The 
Raven; sometimes in the recurrence of the identical word, as 
in Dream-Land and in Ulalume, is used with marked musical 
effect. Poe makes artful Use of melodious names, like Auber, 
Eldorado, Israfel, Ulalume, Lenore. There is wonderful 
charm in the rhythmic movement of Poe's verse, and there 
is also, for most readers, a charm in that omnipresent mel- 
ancholy which pervades his poems. So characteristic is this 
last quality that Poe has been described — "not as a single- 
poem poet, but the poet of a single mood." 
Weird, mystical, unearthly, — 

"Out of Space — out of Time," 

these compositions succeed in fulfilling the purpose of their 
author; they impress the mind with ideas of supernal beauty. 
They speak no message of hope or inspiration, they teach no 
lesson. In Poe's conception of his art, the poet as prophet 
had no place. 

If Poe had a literary master, it was the author of Christabel 
and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge, more than 
any other poet, taught the author of Israfel and The Raven 
the secret of melodious verse and the fascination of the 
weird. 

In the eye of Europe no other American poet ranks as high 
as Poe. Already, before his death, French writers had de- 
tected in Poe's works a quality that appealed strongly to 
their artistic sense; his poems and tales were translated into 
their language; later into Spanish and German also. To the 
present time, Germany, Spain, and France regard the author 
of The Raven as the supreme representative of the West in 
literary art. 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Lowell might, perhaps, have had a higher place among the 
poets had he been more careful in his art; his composition is 
often marred by haste; he gave little time to revision, and 

1 Dream-Land. 






REFERENCE BOOKS 121 

even the more important poems were put forth rapidly. But 
the poet was a master of language and of rhythm. In the 
literary training which helps to artistic expression, Lowell 
had the advantage over his contemporaries except Poe and 
Longfellow. The quality which in these two poets has ap- 
pealed so universally to readers abroad as well as at home is 
apparently lacking in Lowell; but we feel that there is a mas- 
culine strength in his verse which we do not find in Longfel- 
low, and a sincerity of utterance that does not appear in Poe. 
A survey of Lowell's work in literature reveals the ver- 
satility of his genius as well as the general excellence of his 
achievement. Not only is he the only American writer who 
has won high distinction in both prose and verse, — except 
Poe, — but in both verse and prose he has touched so many 
keys with such precision and such power, that he must be 
regarded as distinctly the most gifted among American men 
of letters. 



REFERENCE BOOKS 

Books marked with a * are published by Houghton Mifflin Company 

1. COMPLETE WORKS, AND BIOGRAPHIES 

Longfellow. Complete Poems, Student's Cambridge Edition* 
Complete Works, Riverside Edition* 
Autobiographical Poems. With a sketch of Longfellow's Life 

by Charles Eliot Norton.* 
Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Samuel Longfellow.* 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. G. R. Carpenter. (Beacon 

Biographies.) 

Whittier. Complete Poems, Student's Cambridge Edition* 
Complete Works, Riverside Edition* 
Autobiographical Poems. With a sketch of Whittier's Life by 

Bliss Perry.* 
Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier. S. T. Pickard* 
John Greenleaf Whittier. G. R. Carpenter. (American Men 

of Letters*) 

Poe. Complete Poems, edited with Memoir by J. H. Whitty* 
Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe. J. A. Harrison. 
Edgar Allan Poe. G. E. Woodberry. (American Men of Let- 
ters.*) 
Edgar Allan Poe. W. P. Trent. (English Men of Letters.) 

Lowell. Complete Poems, Student's Cambridge Edition* 
Complete Works, Riverside Edition* 
James Russell Lowell. H. E. Scudder* 
James Russell Lowell, His Life and Work. Ferris Greenslet.* 



122 



REFERENCE BOOKS 



Bryant. The Life and Works of William Cullen Bryant, edited by 

Parke Godwin. 
Biography of William Cullen Bryant. Parke Godwin. 
William Cullen Bryant. John Bigelow. (American Men of 

Letters*) 
Bryant. W. A. Bradley. (English Men of Letters.) 

Emerson. Complete Works, Centenary Edition* 

Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson. J. E. Cabot.* 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. O. W. Holmes. (American Men of 
Letters*) 

Holmes. Complete Poems, Student's Cambridge Edition* 
Complete Works, Riverside Edition* 

Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes. J. T. Morse, Jr.* 
Oliver Wendell Holmes. S. M. Crothers. (American Men of 
Letters*) 

Whitman. Complete Writings, with bibliographical and critical matter 
by O. L. Triggs. 
Walt Whitman. Bliss Perry. (American Men of Letters*) 
Whitman: A Study. John Burroughs.* 

2. SELECTED POEMS 

An American Anthology. Edited by E. C. Stedman.* 
The Chief American Poets. Edited by C. H. Page.* 
The Riverside Literature Series.* 



3. HISTORY AND CRITICISM 

A Literary History of America. Barrett Wendell. 

A Reader's History of American Literature. T. W. Higginson and H. W. 

Boynton.* 
A Student's History of American Literature. W. E. Simonds.* 
A Short History of America's Literature. E. M. Tappan.* 
Poets of America. E. C. Stedman.* 



RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 



147. 

148. 
149. 
150. 
151. 
152. 
153. 
154. 
155. 
156. 
157. 
158. 
159. 
160. 
161. 
102. 
103. 
104. 
105. 
166. 
107. 
108. 
100. 
170. 
171, 
173. 
174. 
175. 
.170. 
177. 
178. 
179. 
180. 
181. 
182. 
183. 
184. 
185. 
ISO. 
187, 
189. 
190. 

191. 
192, 

193. 
194. 
195. 
190. 
197. 



(Continued from 

Pope's Rape of the Lock, etc. 

Hawthorne's Marble Faun. 

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. 

Ouida's Dog of Flanders, etc. 

Ewing's Jackanapes, etc. 

Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince. 

Shakespeare's MidsurnmerNight's Dream. 

Shakespeare's Tempest. 

Irving's Life of Goldsmith. 

Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, etc. 

The Song of Roland. 

Malory's Merlin and Sir Balin. 

Beowulf. 

Spenser's Faerie Queene. Book I. 

Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. 

Prose and Poetry of Cardinal Newman. 

Shakespeare's Henry V. 

De Quiucey's Joan of Arc, etc. 

Scott's Quentin Durward. 

Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship. 

Longfellow's Autobiographical Poems. 

Shelley's Poems. 

Lowell's My Garden Acquaintance, etc. 

Lamb's Essays of Elia. 

172. Emerson's Essays. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin's Flag-Raising. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin's Finding a Home. 

Whittier's Autobiographical Poems. 

Burroughs's Afoot and Afloat. 

Bacon's Essays. 

Selections from John Ruskin. 

King Arthur Stories from Malory. 

Palmer's Odyssey. 

Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man. 

Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. 

Old English and Scottish Ballads. 

Shakespeare's King Lear. 

Moores's Life of Lincoln. 

Thoreau's Camping in the Maine Woods. 

188. Huxley's Autobiography, and Essays 

Byron's Childe Harold, Canto IV, etc. 

Washington's Farewell Address, and Web- 
ster's Bunker Hill Oration. » 

The Second Shepherds' Play, etc. 

Mrs. Gaskell's Crauford. 

Williams's jEneid. 

Irving's Bracebridge Hall. Selections. 

Thoreau's Walden. 

Sheridan's The Rivals. 

Parton's Captains of Industry. Selected. 

199. Macaulay's Lord Clive, and W. Hast- 
ings. 

Howelle's The Rise of Silas Lapham. 

Harris's Little Mr.Thimblefinger Stories. 

Jewett's The Night Before Thanksgiving. 

Shumway's Nibelungenlied. 

Sheffield's Old Testament Narrative. 

Powers's A Dickens Reader. 

Goethe's Faust. Part I. 

Cooper's The Spy. 

Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy. 

Warner's Being a Boy. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin's Polly OHver'a 
Problem. 



inside front cover) 

211. Milton's Areopagitica, etc. 

212. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 

213. Hemingway's Le Morte Arthur. 

214. Moores's Life of Columbus. 

215. Bret Harte's Tennessee's Partner, etc. 

216. Ralph Roister Doister. 

217. Gorboduc. (In preparation.) 

218. Selected Lyrics from Wordsworth, Keats, 

and Shelley. 

219. Selected Lyrics from Dryden, Collins, 

Gray, Cowper and Burns. 

220. Southern Poems. 

221. Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright; Lin- 

coln's Cooper Union Address. 

222. Briggs's College Life. 

223. Selections from the Prose Writings of Mat- 

thew Arnold. 
224-227. See next page, Library Binding. 

228. Selected English Letters. 

229. Jewett's Playday Stories. 

230. Grenfell's Adrift on an Ice-Pan. 

231. Muir's Stickeen. 

232. Harte's Waif of the Plains, etc. 

233. Tennyson's The Coming of Arthur, The 

Holy Grail and the Passing of Arthur. 

234. Selected Essays. 



(Other titles to be announced) 



(75) 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



RIVERSIDE LITERAT 

(Continued) 
EXTRA NUMBERS 




017 165 491 9 



American Authors and their Birthdays. 

Biographical Sketches of American Au- 
thors. 

Warriner's Teaching of English Classics 
in the Grades. 

Scudder's Literature in School. 

Longfellow Leaflets. 

Whittier Leaflets. 

Holmes Leaflets. 

Thomas's How to Teach English Clas- 
sics. 

Holbrook's Northland Heroes. 

The Riverside Song Book. 

Lowell's Fable for Critics. 

Selections from American Authors. 

Lowell Leaflets. 

Holbrook's Hiawatha Primer. 

Selections from English Authors. 



R Hawthorne ' s Twice-Told Tales. Selected. 

a Irving' s Essays from Sketch Book. Se- 
lected. 

T Literature for the Study of Language. 

U A Dramatization of the Song of Hia- 
watha. 

V Holbrook ' s Book of Nature Myths . 
W Brown's In the Days of Giants. 
X Poems for the Study of Language. 

Y Warner ' s In the W ilderness . 
Z Nine Selected Poems. 

A A Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner and 
Lowell's The Vision of Sir La-unfal. 

Poe's The Raven, Whittier 's Snow- 
Bound, and Longfellow's The Court- 
ship of Miles Standish. 

Selections for Study and Memorizing. 



BB 



CO 



LIBRARY BINDING 



135- 
160. 
166. 
168. 
177. 
178. 
181- 
183. 
187- 
191. 
211. 
316. 
222. 
223. 
224. 
225. 
226. 
227. 
335. 
236. 

K. 



136. Chaucer's Prologue, The Knight's Tale, and The Nun's Priest's Tale. 

Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book I. 

Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship. 

Shelley's Poems. Selected. 

Bacon's Essays. 

Selections from the Works of John Ruskin. 
182. Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer. 

Old English and Scottish Ballads. 
188 . Huxley ' s Autobiography and Selected Essays 

Second Shepherd's Play, Everyman, etc. 

Milton's Areopagitica, etc. 

Ralph Roister Doister. 

Briggs's College Life. 

Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. 

Perry's The American Mind and American Idealism. 

Newman's University Subjects. 

Burroughs's Studies in Nature and Literature. 

Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship. 

Briggs' To College Girls. 

Selected Literary Essays from James Russell Lowell. 

Minimum College Requirements in English for Study. 



Complete catalogue and price Itst of the Riverside Literature Series free upon 

application 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO <76) 



